CHAPTER ONE SCOTLAND

Well we left Scotland and Scottish beers behind a couple of days ago and are now in England and English Beers
I have been having the usual travelling issues with the Internet and have discovered that the term free wi fi does not mean working wi fi and so am behind in my journal keeping
Anyhow enjoyed the exploration of  Scottish  beers  pubs. We left Glasgow and drove north towards Oban which is on the coast where the ferry leaves to some of the Islands, it was our idea to travel on down the coast and catch a ferry across to the Isle of Islay but as we hadn't pre planned and pre booked we found that as it was very busy every thing was booked out or the prices had been hiked up so we just stayed the one night and  moved on. We tried a couple of beers rom the local Oban Brewery Bar and also a couple in the Lorne pub and the Auley pub
As this is not a geography lesson I may get things a bit out of order but we drove past the Loch Lomond and Loch Ness, funny places both as I would have expected that there would have been more places to stop and that there would have been more people seeing how busy the towns where - anyway we stopped at our one attempt to see a castle on Loch Ness but they wanted 8 quid each to see a pile of rocks so we gave it a miss and moved on stopping at Inverness where we called in at the Blackfriars pub and interesting , tiny little pub and the Castle Tavern not surprisingly across the road from the castle, a nice pub for a bit of a session I should think
we ended up staying at a tiny place near Nairn called Carrbridge - a one pub town a very nice village pub, called the Cayr Bar and very full being the only one there. The Band B we stayed was very good run as some of them are by a very prim and proper lady which can make you a bit uncomfortable by their gushing

AFTER A BEER AT THE LOCAL

We left there driving up across the moors and got on to the coast road just east of Nairn and pulleed up at Fraserburg for a bit of a look at a fishing town. Perhaps unfairly I was a bit disappointed in this place, it is the home of the Brew Dog brewery which we drove past but didn't stop as it it looked just like a faactory and run down one at that and there didn't appear to be any concession whatsoever to accommodate interested beer tourist I had a much better Brew Dog time later.
We went to the Elizabethan Tavern for a refuelling and wondered what we had walked into. This pub has three bars two of which where closed so we went into the third one which had four or five locals and the barmaid (elderly) who looked as though she couldn't understand a word we said and we only got a beer by pointing and holding up the required amount of fingers. After we sat down we got the distinct impression that we where the subject of discussion and amusement from our fellow drinkers . However after about ten minutes of not feeling very welcome the barmaid came around and asked if we would like to look at the other bars which where closed because, at that time of day only locals came in and it was an unnecessary expense to run them all .  She then gave us some local history asked about our trip offered a tasting of one of the Brew Dog beers from one of the other bar taps and really couldn't have been more friendly in a dour Scottish way so ended much better than began.

BREW DOG BREWERY FRASERBURGH