A lovely early start this morning.... we had pre-booked a Highlands Tour with Nigel and we were excited to get started. Nigel was fantastic...so welcoming with a real sense of fun. We were lucky to have Nigels son Thomas as our tour guide for the day.

We set off to lovely Dornoch for our first stop... Ian walked across the greens of the 'Royal Dornoch Gold Course... no time for a game though.

The drive was so scenic...although by now we expected no less.
These Hairy highland cows (Hairy coos) ... were so lovely..

 ...and hairy sheep too..

Our next stop was a castle that appears to be straight from a fairy-tale ....the beautiful 13th century  Dunrobin Castle.

Once again we were greeted by a piper...

Stepping inside we could see it was quite different to Stirling castle... and the tour through the castle was just beautiful... once we stepped out of the foyer...photos were not allowed. Their obvious love of safari hunting was evident in the house and inside the museum onsite.

The view from the castle windows showed spectacular manicured gardens...

Then once down in the gardens....the view back to the front of the castle was breathtaking.

The timing was perfect to attend the falconry display.... gosh that was interesting and a lot of fun. The Falconer had such control of these birds as they swooped in low over our heads and showed us their speed and hunting abilities.
My photos are all of the cute fluffy owl because he was slow enough for me to capture.... the falcons were so fast...all my camera captured was a blur.


From Dunrobin we headed to Shin Falls... these waterfalls are the spot to watch the salmon leaping back up the stream.... we didn't see any ourselves no matter how long and hard we looked.

A quick stop at 'Millionaires View' . with its spectacular view of the mountains of Sutherland and the Shin river.

Our final stop of the day was the Glenmorangie Whiskey Distillery.. we took a very educational tour of the distillery... and a tasting at the end... a lovely way to end the day.

 Thanks for another amazing day Scotland.