Mr Blue Sky & Loch Ness......

On the way back from Loch Ness/Inverness, we went home the other scenic route which took us past small towns like Granton-on-Spey and Aviemore. I have not been to these places since I was a child at school - yep long time! Whilst things have changed and moved on, the old Victorian buildings remain as does the lovely landscape.

The thing about the Highlands of Scotland is that it does offer so many things. It is fantastic for sports, you can go white water rafting, skiing, cycling. You can take a step back in time and go on some old trains. You can submerge yourself in the landscape and history, or you can admire the old Victorian houses. The Highlands were a big holiday destination in the Victorian times and I can see why. For us, Inverness was actually not at all exciting, their castle, well we live in the capital with one huge one in the city centre, and then have the palace too, so sorry, doesn't quite do the wow thing and shopping, well again, Inverness not exactly that Mecca for it - but the Highlands does have things to offer and a charm all of its own - genuinely - read the whole of this post you will see!

So on this whistle stop of a trip in which the weather was not great we took another way home, actually a faster way! But before we left we wanted to eat! The thing with small towns however is that they cater to a more traditional set of rules and not us city folks who are used to doing more or less what we want when we want, like feed me and entertain me now! Oh, I sound awful but I'm not, really!!!

This was only around 5pm, they were not open and we really liked the look of this place so were so disappointed!

Nor was the other cafe which we stopped at in Aviemore. They are only open from 8.30am until 5.30pm, us city folks clearly don't know this!

However, there was an out of place looking Italian place which turns out has been here for the last 33 years and is family run!

Our timing was clearly perfect as it was busy, and outside it was just pouring with rain so you couldn't really do anything outdoorsy (in addition to it was too late to do that sort of thing) and actually it was fun!

So we ate some food and set off on our nearly 2.5 - 3 hour journey home in the rain.

As we set off the rain had stopped, and the sun had come out to remind us that this was summer so I took a shot of it from the car whilst passing a ruin of an old abbey!

Then the clouds set in....

Getting thicker and thicker.....

Until the heavens burst and were pouring with rain! It was great. It was spectacular and atmospheric to see from the dryness of inside our car - I would not have been thinking that if I had been outside!

Then as we got down the road to around Pitlochry/Perth we saw in the distance a heart being shown in the landscape from the sun to remind us that we were nearing home - how sweet and beautiful and yep we were glad to be returning home! We were glad to see that home was happy to see us returning back too!

As we were admiring the heart in the hills and the sky started to burst into blue the radio started playing........

Mr Blue Sky - ELO.

Love it hope you do too and imagine us all smiling and singing in the car to this!

Sun is shinin' in the sky,
There ain't a cloud in sight
It's stopped rainin'
Everybody's in a play
And don't you know
It's a beautiful new day.

If you want to see the Loch Ness photos, I posted them in the blog post before this one!