I woke up a little late today, didn't get up until 8am or so. But that was OK, since we didn't leave the house until 10:30. Our first stop today
was the Bladnoch Distillery, where we took a really interesting tour of the distillery. Apparently, the distillery was owned by United Distilleries
until the mid-1990's, when they stopped production (when it became unecenomical). An irishman bought it in the late 90's, while he was looking for
a holiday house. It took a while before he was allowed to make more whiskey, but in 2002 they started production again.
Now, it takes a while to make whiskey - most of the stuff they sell is aged 13 or 15 years, but the minimum for the spirit to be called "whiskey" is 3 years. The Bladnoch distillery doesn't age it's single malt whiskey for less than 8 years, though, so it's still going to be a while before they can sell anything distilled by the new owner. In the meantime, though, they can still sell the stuff distilled when United Brewery were the owners. I bought two bottles of their 15 year old whiskey (which is 55% alcohol content!) - one for me and one for Andrew (don't tell him! :p)
After the distillery, we went into Newton Stewart for lunch. I finally bought a nail clipper, because my fingernails were getting pretty long (I
hate having long finger nails). Then we had lunch on one of the pubs in town, the Crown Hotel. It was pretty good, but the chips weren't as good
as I've been used to. Big servings, of course, and the prawn cocktail was pretty good (huge serving).
Then my mum & I dropped my grandmother off at some of her friend's house and we drove up to Bruce's Stone, which is a monument to Robert the Bruce, who won independance for the Scots from Brittain in the early 14th century. It's a fair hike up to the stone, and it really is just a stone. Apparently it commemorates the spot where he dropped rocks down on a brittish army and turned them back. The view there was pretty damn spectacular, though, and the river looked to be in full swing (perhaps from all the rain we had yesterday).
We go home a bit early, so we went for a walk over the hill. There was a nice view of a storm over Newton Stewart, and lots of cows. For dinner we had a delicious baked dinner - chicken, yum!