Pitlochry: Monday - Black Spout Walk & Japanese Garden

We bought a little pamphlet of walks around Pitlochry at the Tourist Information Centre and decided to start with this 3 mile walk through the Black Spout Wood, taking you past the Edradour Distillery then back down through the wood, coming out at the Athol Palace Hotel.  I've marked the approximate location of our cottage with the large arrow and outlined the walk in black.

This is the Black Spout a waterfall 60m high (can you tell I have the guide beside me?) on the Edradour Burn.

Brian at the Black Spout

Me at the Black Spout

The view of Pitlochry from Edradour

As we came down toward the Athol Palace Hotel, we saw this giant pine cone!!!

Isn't it fabulous!  It is carved with a chain saw and looks very realistic.  I've seen animals and birds carved with a chain saw before, all very skilled but nothing that I would have wanted to take home, this one is just so much better, I'd love one of these.

As well as the pine cone, there was this pretty little Japanese Garden.

with these interesting metal swan sculptures.

In the afternoon we went to Beauty and Wellbeing 

where we  both had deluxe organic aromatherapy facials and mini-back massage, it was fabulous.  I couldn't recommend this salon highly enough.  Jane was very attentive and thoroughly professional.

Monday was also theatre night. Pitlochry is famous for it's Festival Theatre which has a series of plays running throughout the summer, you could see a different play every night if you wanted to.  We had booked to see "Kiss me Kate" but before we went to the theatre we went out for a meal to the Fern Cottage.

Brian had the Breast of Duck accompanied by a berry,sage and port wine sauce, followed by Steamed Chocolate Truffle and I had Sea Bass with a lemon butter sauce followed by the Chef's Cheesecake.  All very delicious.

The production of 'Kiss me Kate' was excellent, it was fast paced and quite raunchy, we had seen this show nearly 30 years ago and it was a much tamer version!  What most impressed us was that the actors were also the orchestra, apart from the piano player and the trumpet player all the players were also singing and dancing in the chorus or had parts in the musical.  

We discovered a couple of days later that the lead actor and his family had rented the lower half of the cottage where we were staying.  Not that we saw him much, he was either doing a show or rehearsing, his poor wife was a bit fed up and went off to visit her parents for a few days.

So a pretty busy day on Monday, but good to get those things in while the weather was still a bit iffy.