With rain promised this afternoon, we ate our breakfast as quickly as possible this morning, which was a shame, as the Salt House in Golspie has terrible WiFi, but an amazing breakfast. Its decor is also very cool, which does not set you up for a long walk quite as well as porridge, fruit and avocado on toast, but it was lovely, in a deep shade of purple, nonetheless.

As it turns out, purple was the theme for the day, because there was literally (virtually) nothing else to see between Golspie and Tain other than flowers. Even the suggestion to “caution otters” fell on deaf ears, as there were no otters to see. The only thing we would caution them about would be the works on the firth bridge, which I think they were already aware of, hence disappearing off somewhere else.

Thinking of purple, the only other thing worthy of mention on the roadside were two roadkill deer, both with their heads cut clean off. This was super confusing as we couldn’t imagine the following scenario at all, which after some conversations with ChatGPT seems to be the most likely explanation…..

Scottish Janet and Mark (names of Scottish cultural stereotypes have been changed to protect the innocent) are driving along one autumn evening between Golspie and Tain admiring the way the sunlight glints between the autumnal foliage of the trees. Suddenly, blinded by a shaft of sunlight, Mark hits a red deer as it bounds into the road, camouflaged against the golden trees behind it. Screeching to a halt, Mark takes a moment to check that both him and Janet are OK after this traumatic incident. When both of them have taken a breath, Mark asks Janet for help. “Would you give me a hand getting something out of the boot to sort out this mess?” “Of course”, says Janet. They open the boot and Janet reaches for the plastic backed, tartan picnic blanket, thinking that Mark wants to move the now dead deer off the road without getting their hands dirty. However, Mark has other ideas… “No, Janet, can you move the walkers poles out of the way for me? Yep those, and the boxes of Werther’s original toffees and Scottish shortbread? Brilliant, under the walking boots…..yes! That samurai sword, that should do it. One clean swipe later and the wall of their lodge dining room has a space all planned out for a deer head, antlers included. The only question that ChatGPT had left for me was what species of deer we saw, which I would be able to tell by looking at its antlers. I pointed out that my whole conversation with it in the first place was based on asking it about a deer with its head cut clean off, and it did actually confess:

Anyway, in the meantime, huge kudos to Scotland and evolution for combining to bring most flora into the bee friendly, UV end of the spectrum.

The combination of zero rain, a live bee and a flower out in Scotland must be about as rare as a minute’s gap in the traffic on the A9, so lovely to see that the flowers are doing their best to entice bees in.

Mark and I felt like today was a stronger day. At least Mark googled how long it takes for your legs not to hurt at the start and end of each day if you run half a marathon each week and AI’s answer, summarised, is “you’re good”. It had more to say on my level of fitness, which will apparently take a little longer to reach that level.

However, when it comes to dodging traffic we’re like a synchronised sports team (although I do not advise putting this on the list of olympic worthy events).

Seamlessly, and without a word, when a vehicle approaches ahead of us, we both move to the verge at the same time, keep walking and then when the traffic has passed we equally smoothly move back to the side of the road where it is easier to walk. We managed this brilliantly today until Scotland managed to mess up that plan completely. No, it wasn’t the rain, which actually held off almost completely………

You guessed it……

We’re not whisky drinkers, but whisky drinking friends of mine have said that we just need to find the right one. Well, we have searched extensively today through nine of Glenmorangie’s (pronounced Glen-morangie, rhymes with orangey) catalogue and found many that we would be happy to drink again.

As Harrison Ford would say, “Nice……”

Distance 30.6km