Today was a glorious day: for it began and ended with so many doggies. Cafe dogs, walking at the park dogs, and Scottish working sheepdogs. We got to pet so many of them, and they are all incredibly well-behaved and socialized.
The cafe we chose had a cafe puppy barely 10 weeks old. Cafe puppy did not like my llama hat and glasses, but we were friends as soon as I removed the offending items and thus looked normal again and not like some human-llama chimera that was in dire need of a good slaying. Cafe puppy’s cafe had savory scones, and I got a cheese scone, piping hot and just baked, with crispy cheese on top of it. Perfect. The chimera is happy.
Our first stop, and the only dogless one of the day: Ruthven barracks, the ruins of a barracks on top of a nearby hill. The barracks were made in the early 1700s, during the Jacobite uprising, and they were built over the ruins of an old castle. It was wrecked in the mid-1700s by the retreating Jacobite soldiers and has been in ruins ever since. The original town of Kingussie had been on the banks of the river, closer to the barracks, but the town moved to be out of the floodplain at some point. Now, only cows live there.
You can walk all around the barracks and in them, and I of course went to go stand in the latrines so I could say “someone pooped here!!” The barracks had an incredible view over the valley, which I think means it is quite good at its job of being at a strategic vantage point.
Ruthven barracks had a surprise for us! It wasn’t in the latrines – it was hairy coos – so many of them in the fields all around its base. We didn’t have carrots for them and they were perhaps upset by this because they had so many moos. We had also forgot our hand sani, so we pet them with our eyes only and informed them that they were very beautiful cows.
We absolutely do not want to be late to our 3pm date with the working sheepdogs, so we chose a nearby-ish lake (loch) to walk around: Loch an Eilein. It has a ruined castle on a small island in the middle, and there were rumors that the castle at one point had a secret tunnel under the lake to the land, but no such evidence has been found.
The walk was half lakeshore, half pine forest, all doggies. It’s overall a beautiful hike, which seemed to be pretty popular with a lot of folks who were biking or taking their dogs out for an off-leash stroll. “Come on Eileen” is stuck in my head the whole time, except the words are “Loch an Eilein.” Lucky for my friends, I chose to keep this stupid song to myself. This part of the Cairngorms is famous for red squirrels, but with all the dogs around, I did not see even one.
It smells like fall, in a pine-y way. Lots of the trees are very old and twisted in infinitely twirly ways that I don’t see at home. They’d make good spooky halloween trees. Poor Scott is likely sick of Arielle and I going “omg look at this TREE,” but he is a very good sport and keeps his sighs inside of his heart.
Loch an Eilein was also home to probably one of the most quaint gift shops we’ve come across, minus the one that was just called “craft cottage” on the way to Skye. You could even take a quaint little tinkle in the nearby toilets.
But now for the thing I have been waiting for – scottish working sheepdogs! If you arrive early, you get to pet all the doggies before the tour buses arrive and before they get muddy. For once in my life, I am early. These dogs, they do not mind if I am a woman-chimera hybrid, for they are smart and really want to be pet.
The doggie demonstrations are given by Neil the shepherd. Neil really loves his dogs and being a shepherd. His dogs were so fast, agile, and super smart. They can round up the herd, steer them, and even split the herd or different sheep based on the commands Neil gave. The dog doing the demo was named Jo jo and he was a bit overeager, wrangling the herd when Neil wasn’t looking.
Many of the challenges facing shepherds today are the incredibly low costs they get for a kilo of wool, and grappling with conservationism and environmentalist efforts. It makes you wonder about what the future of shepherding looks like – and what will happen with natural fibers like wool in the future.
We got to shear a sheep, feed some of the lambs, and also got to pet every dog. The youngest was a 17 week old puppy (which was not herding), and the oldest working dog was just over 13. When the dogs retire, they go live in the house with Neil and his family, I presume getting spoiled rotten.
After our sheepdog bonanza, our dinner curse struck again – and this is the slight downside to shoulder season travel in tiny, tiny towns. A lot of places were closed and google was wrong again! But we did get directed by some hotel staff to a great place to grab a burger and nachos, so dinner was at least a delicious success.
Tomorrow: back to Edinburgh, and our first really rainy day of the trip. It’s been very sunny and I’ve been quite confused about what country I am actually in. My sunglasses have been super effective.