Having experienced New Zealand‘s breathtaking beauty at the end of 2018 we wanted to travel somewhere a little closer to home that might offer some similarities. As neither Kirstin or I had been to the Highlands before we decided on flying to Inverness in Scotland to stay in the beautiful Muckrach Country House Hotel in Speyside, at the north west of the Cairngorms (the largest national park in the UK).

Restaurant recommendations

Each morning started with a delicious breakfast at the Muckrach hotel after waking up to views across the Cairngorm hills. Filling our bellies with everything from a Full Scottish, to kippers, to smoked salmon, to porridge, to the slightly less quintessentially Scottish, avocado on toast. All while sat peacefully watching the birds at the birdfeeder, and Harry the hotel’s handsome Labrador bounding around the gardens.

Just west of Inverness, we explored the hills and beaches of the Black Isle. After a long blustery walk The Fortrose Cafe was a brilliant stop to refuel with tasty homemade soup and cake (lots of great gluten free options). The community run Rosemarkie Beach Cafe marked a great half way point to find out more about the area over a hot chocolate.

We ventured into the town of Aviemore for dinner on our second night, having been recommended The Old Bridge Inn by our hotel. I had some delicious Scottish halibut with fried squid with spaghetti and spring vegetables (below), and Kirstin also went for seafood with equally tasty Scottish seatrout with crushed new potatoes. It was really impressive for somewhere tucked away outside of the town itself, and well worth finding.

For dinner on our final evening we decided to stay in and use the hotel’s own restaurant. It was our anniversary and we wanted to both be able to have a drink with our meal (Scotland is zero tolerance with drink driving).

Venison is a personal favourite so jumped at the opportunity to try some of the locally reared meat. Served with black pudding and potato cakes, but it was the redcurrant sauce which perfectly complimented the tender venison and brought the dish together. It even looked amazing too, if a little busy on the plate.

What we hadn’t bargained for is how popular restaurants in the area would be. Throughout the trip most restaurants we’d call would be booked right through from dinner service starting at 5pm right through until 9pm. This caught us particularly off guard while exploring Inverness on our first afternoon. We’d wanted to play things by ear and see how we were feeling after the flight and early start, but did have our eye on The Mustard Seed. Unfortunately when dinner service started, we were told that we couldn’t be seated for a further 4 hours without a reservation. After working our way through TripAdvisor and calling 8 other restaurants we eventually stumbled across a bar called The White House. The food was surprisingly good given that we had almost given up hope on the way back to our car, the staff were friendly too and full of tips for the local area.

Highland Gins

It’s the inaugural International Scottish Gin Day this August and I’m proud to be an official supporter. While I was in the area I wanted to make sure that I became familiar with at least some of the local gins having received lots of great recommendations through Twitter. First on the list was Red Door gin and Daffy’s at the Muckrach hotel bar. The former being very juniper forward but with notes of raspberry despite having a savoury feel, with the latter contrastingly being quite sweet, but refreshing, light and at points almost sherberty.

We arrived a bit early to The Old Bridge Inn and were able to enjoy a quick drink in the pub area – another excuse to try a local gin, this time from Kinrara. It had a subtle spice to it, but a very clean finish. I completely love the bottle design too with the painted view over a still loch being very reminiscent of many moments of our trip.

Gin Bothy, from just south of the Cairngorms, was another I was fortunate enough to try while in the area. Its savoury flavour coming through from heather, milk thistle, pine needles, hawthorn root and rosemary to make a very distinctive gin. Not the sort of profile I’d typically go for, but very much enjoyed none the less.

The last local gin was one I actually picked up a miniature of earlier on in the trip. GoodWill gin comes from the world’s first community-owned distillery, GlenWyvis, which is also fully powered by renewable energy.

The Water of Life

Before we headed back to the airport we wanted to learn a bit more about Speyside’s most famous export: scotch whisky. The Glenlivet is one of the world’s biggest selling single malt scotch whiskies, and their distillery just happened to be a short drive away from where we were staying.

My knowledge of whisky is limited so it was really appreciated to find out on arrival that we were the only people on our tour timeslot, so essentially had a personal tour! Our host Andrew was hugely informative and walked us through the whole process, showing us the stunning stills, huge washbacks and mashtun, letting us sample some of the many variations produced along the way. Unfortunately due to the nature of the working distillery and some of the processes going on, we weren’t able to take any photos on this part of the tour.

Helpfully I was able to bottle up my samples to take home with me afterwards to taste when we got back as I was driving. We were also given a beautiful tasting glass to take home with us from the tour, so now I can properly savour them.

We had such a great time exploring the Highlands and can’t wait to come back and see even more.