Best of Scotland 2016
a dolly on tour
After lunch in Dunkeld, we went on a tour of a whisky distillery. It’s a very Scottish thing to do, but as a nondrinker I found it pretty boring and very smelly. The only bit of personal interest is called Towser. Towser is a cat who lived at the distillery. When she died she held the Guiness World Record for most mice caught in her lifetime.
After a boring afternoon, I had to reclaim the rest of the day. While everyone else in the tour group was resting before dinner, I went out exploring around our hotel in Aberfeldy. I found a little nature trail.
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There was a statue of Robert Burns, one of Scotland’s most famous writers. According to a plaque, this is where he was inspired to write The Birks of Aberfeldy. Another interpretive sign informed me that a Birk is a birch tree.
A google search found me a lyric:
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The hoary cliffs are crown’d wi’ flowers,
White o’er the linns the burnie pours,
And rising, weets wi’ misty showers
The birks of Aberfeldy.
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And another google search provides some Scottish translations. I learned birk on the trail, and I already knew that a burn is a stream, so a burnie would be a small stream. Hoary means gray, a linn is a waterfall, and weets means wet. I'm pretty sure I saw what he was talking about!
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The birks were such a nice discovery, but nobody else in our group saw them!