Scotland the beautiful

Sue's grandfather was born in Scotland and emigrated to Australia in the early 1920s when he was just 15. His name was Donald Fyfe and all we knew about his life in Scotland was that he came from a town called Banchory in Aberdeenshire. The only other bit of useful information we had was the farm was called 'Newton'.

Sue had never been to Scotland, but she is proud of her heritage and was keen to see the land of her ancestors. I had never been to Scotland either, but I have played soccer with a lot of Scottish blokes and even though they are all mad bastards, they were a great bunch.

On the way we thought we'd stop in Edinburgh to break up the drive and to see if the Queen was maybe visiting her Scottish friends and was waiting for us to turn up.


We took the road less travelled and headed to Scotland over the hills instead of the coast road. It was a beautiful drive and even had a rest stop right on the border. Sadly there's no passport control, so we didn't get our passports stamped. What we did get though was a bacon burger. Did you know that they deep fry their bacon in Scotland? We didn't! I think the chef was a Pom though!

We found a little B&B and then walked in to town. We should have got a B&B that was closer! We found Edinburgh Castle, but it was getting late and was way past the Queen's bed time. We'd explore it more tomorrow.

The next day we headed back to the castle for a proper tour of the place. It's a pretty bleak looking place, but pretty interesting. I thought having a great big cannon parked out the front of the church was a great idea!

Whaddaya know, a hot rod! Those bastards are everywhere... well actually, the owner of this superb looking '35 Ford Coupe, Mark Millar, claims he's the only hot rodder in Dundee! I could make a joke about "I'm the only hot rodder in the village", but I won't.

After Dundee we headed up to Banchory. It's a beautiful little town with the lovely Dee River running through it. We found a little B&B and then headed in to town to see if we could track down some of the Fyfe family history.

We found the registrar's office and Sue went in and asked a few questions. She came out with copies of her grandfather's birth registry as well as her great grandparents' wedding registry. She also got a copy of a hand drawn map of the cemetry in Durris where quite a few Fyfe's were buried.

We found the graves and I took a photo of the lovely little church where Sue said her great-grandparents would have been married.

After we got back in the car, I had another look at the wedding registry. It said they were married at the Burnett Arms Hotel! You bewdy! I'd noticed when we drove past earlier in the day, so I went back and had a chat to the bloke on reception. He said the place hadn't changed much since the late 1800s. Pretty neat to think that we were in the same place over 100 years later!

Unfortunately we couldn't find the farm as we only had a rough idea of where it was and after chatting to the old farmer that ran the B&B with his wife, it turned out there were quite a few Newton farms. Slightly disappointed, we thought we'd brighten things up by heading to the Malt Whiskey Trail.

Most of the well known distilleries are located around Dufftown. It's a beautiful drive through the Scottish Highlands to get there, but it was getting late so we didn't have time to drop in to any distilleries. We did find a greate B&B on the main drag and had a lovely meal. Sue had Haggis and I had the Angus beef. It was the first (and only) really nice meal we had in the UK!

The pic above is of the clock tower. There's not really much else to see in Dufftown.

So we went to The Glenlivet. One of Sue's favourite Scotches, she went and did the tour while I looked after Luka. There's a fair bit of Scotch floating around the air, so we figured we'd give it a couple of months before we got him started on the hard stuff!

The next day it was back to Banchory as Sue really wanted to see if we could find the farm. This part of Scotland is also quite well known for its castles, so we thought we'd drop in to Crathes Castle as it was the local one to Banchory.

We got chatting to one of the volunteers about Sue's family history and it turned out one of them had spent a lot of time in Durris. As it turned out, she knew exactly where Newton farm in Durris was. It's funny how things turn out sometimes.

And there it is, Newton farm in Durris, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. We actually drove up the (rather rough) driveway and knocked on the door. We had heard that the farm had been renamed, but the lady that answered the door said it was definitely Newton farm.

Later that day we headed back to Edinburgh. I had contacted a local hot rodder, Gordon Brennan, and he kindly put us up in his lovely place in Portobello. What you're looking at is a Scottish beach in the height of summer.

Gordon said that the water was never really warm enough to swim in, so it probably explains the lack of towels and half naked bodies.