Thursday, July 18

Montrose is a small town on the east coast about 30 miles south of Aberdeen. Its only important to us because my grandmother with some number of  "greats" in front of her title lived there. My sister and her friend, Robert, visited there several months ago, and today we finally got there. The Tom-Tom took us on a lot of very small roads and said it would take 1 3/4 hours. I don't drive the speed limit which many times is 60 mph so, it took us 2 hours. We took big roads back and don't you know,  it took 2 hours. Much better.

After driving through the center of town, we checked in at the visitor center and got oriented. We drove out to the beach and had a snack of chicken fingers and fries. Less than rewarding. It was beach food. Since we had figured out the distances we walked back into town after taking pictures of the Sourdynes lighthouse. We walked through a brown golf course, kind of scruffy; past the Church of  Saints Mary and Peter and then the larger one - don't have a name for it.

It actually started to rain a little as we walked down High Street (the main drag) looking for places my sister had mentioned. We ducked into a sports apparel store to ask directions and talked to a young woman and one a bit older. We have noticed that the Scots give very explicit directions and repeat them several times. They want to make sure you understand. I'm not sure what happens, but when we walk away we look at each other and wonder which way to go. I think its us, not them. Because of these women, we realized we had passed all of what we were looking for the first time. On our way back we did better. The rain got heavier so it was obviously time to duck into A Cup Above and have an espresso with Nadine, the owner who remembered my sister and her friends - even that she had a bowl of soup. By the time we finished, the rain had stopped, the sun was out, and the beautiful weather had returned.

We found a nice tourist shop and bought souvenirs and then crossed the street with some directions from a very Scottish gentleman on the sidewalk to the Picture House for fish cakes and a beer. Nice cozy place with a lot of wood and pretty good fish cakes to share. We watched some of the British Open being played near Edinburgh. Last weekend, when we were in Inverness, they were playing the Scottish Open. That was one reason it was hard to find a place to eat.

Walking back to  the beach we passed a statue of Robert Burns, Scotland's National Poet. On the way back to the resort, we stopped and picked up just enough food to help us finish most of what we had in the kitchen for dinner. We leave on Saturday morning, so we need to manage the refrigerator.