25 July 2017 Inverness

We rose early this morning had our breakfast and set off to catch our 10.42 train to Dunrobin Castle.  Lovely journey as they all are.  The castle is most northerly of Scotland’s great houses.  It is the largest house in the highlands , with 189 rooms and is one of Britain’s oldest continuously inhabited houses, dating in part from the early 1300s.  It is the historic home of the Earls and Dukes of Sutherland.  The railway station was built by the Earl of Sutherland as his private station.  Today it is one of many request stop stations.  When the conductor checked our Scottish Rail passes at the beginning of the journey we let him know we were alighting at Dunrobin.  If we had not done this the train would not have stopped.  We had two hours at the Castle before our return journey and we had to wave our train down.  It is well worth a visit all of the main rooms looking like they would have in the 1800s.  No photography inside.  The gardens were laid out in 1850 by the architect Sir Charles Barry, who was responsible for the Victorian extension to the Castle and who designed the Houses of Parliament.  The arrangement of the Gardens, inspired by those at Versailles, have changed little in the 150 or so years since planted.  There is also a Museum housing many objects of interest.  We did not have time to see the Museum.  We made our way to the train arriving back after 5.00 we had booked ourselves into a lovely restaurant The Mustard Seed for 5.30 beautiful meal and we wandered back to our B&B exhausted.  Lovely day indeed.   Sabine and Sam xx

The station, not the castle!

This is the castle!