We arose early, around 7am, had breakfast, paid the bill and left around 9.15. Our first port of call was a tyre repair outfit. We decided that of the places of which we'd been told by the proprietor, we were best going to a national chain and indeed we did go to the National. This proved a mistake. The chap who met us seemed bored out of his mind and rather unthrilled by the prospect of having to work. However we got the job done, as we thought, called in at Halfords to purchase a tyre pressure gauge and some spare fuses, and got back on our way again, calling in at the Gretna Services just across the border to refuel.
The rest of the morning was a long drive up motorway and dual carriageway to Perth. This passed some massive roadworks, part of the project to upgrade all of the current A74/A74(M)/M74 route between Carlisle and Glasgow to motorway standard (and incidentally rename the whole lot `M6'). We arrived at the Caithness Glass factory just to the north at 13.15, had lunch in the cafeteria, and had a brief wander round, watching the factory workers through the windows. The products they made were highly intricate, but none of them of a type which we were particularly keen, and certainly not willing to part with our money to obtain.
We continued up the A9 to Carrbridge, around 20 miles southwest of Inverness. Here we stopped to visit the Landmark Visitors' Centre, for which one could pay a nontrivial sum to visit a sort of theme park. We decided not to, and instead watched a short 3D film about the ``Great Wood of Caledon'', wandered around a small exhibition on the same, looked around the shop and then went back to the car.
We drive the short distance to the centre of Carrbridge to see the village's well-known bridge over the River Dulnain. This bridge was built in the mid-eighteenth century by General Wade, who built many roads across the Highlands of Scotland for ease of moving troops around. Many of these roads remain today, the trunk roads often following the old route, though in places the roads have been straightened and habitations bypassed.
We headed south again, taking the road parallel to the A9 that runs through the ski resort of Aviemore, to our guesthouse for that night at Feshiebridge. We arrived there at 6pm, spent a little while amusing ourselves with some of the puzzles on offer downstairs, and began dinner at seven.
Dinner that night was superb (the place is one highly recommended in the ``Taste of Scotland'' guidebook), indeed the best meal of the entire trip --- certainly a big improvement on Carlisle. We started with delicious hot bread rolls, followed by salad, an excellent chicken dish, and a raspberry crème brûlèe, very different from that at Merton and much better, not just because of the copious quantities of Grand Marnier that had gone into it. One of the staff (who kept calling the liqueur ``Grand Mariner'') was telling us that they had until recently had a group of children staying under the guard of some strict religious types, who had forbidden the use of alcohol in the cooking, and they were now making up for it.
After dinner we played ``Trivial Pursuit'' with a couple that had been at dinner, with much amusement regarding a question over how James I had caused a sirloin of beef to be so-called. The answer is both obvious and ridiculous --- the king had knighted it!
Eventually I collected all my six different-coloured ``cheeses'' and was declared the winner. We went to bed soon after, at 11.15, still fascinated by Sir Loin of Beef.