Thurso - Inverness, Scotland, August 2011

On 11 August 2011 we started our journey southward to ensure we were in Aberdeen buy 22 August and well settled into the flats that had been arranged and able to greet guests arriving from New Zealand for the third great wedding of the year and the second important Scottish wedding, Zara Phillips having occuppied top spot by getting married in Scotland.

The rural farming scenes as we left Thurso were similar to until we reached the coast below Wick.

Here we glimpsed the source of riches to the east coast of Scotland - oil rigs in the North Sea.  It is the source of curretn wealth to Aberdeen in particular.

The sun did shine the odd time to enable a picnic lunch or even dinner in the evening.

The Clearances of Scotland are well documented and along the coast an historic site protected along the coast near Dunbeath.

 Remains of an old long house.

An inhospitable landscape where crofters were resettled and expected to be able to make a living.  Try as they might the families gradually moved elsewhere and abandoned the settlement.  The history reads little different to the settlement up the wanganui River in New Zealnd but settled for different reasons and now reverted to Government Conservation land.

There was also some very productive pasture land further south.

And seaside vista but really too cold for other than viewing.

Large bridges over Dornock Firth, Cromarty Firth and Moray Firth have greatly shortened the travel time from the north.

The night of 11th Aug we stayed in the suburbs of Inverness and the next day headed south east.