Tuesday, and coming home.

For our final day, we set out into the Aberdeenshire countryside to find big rocks with things carved in them. There are lots of very old stones around this area that are called "Pictish Stones." They have carvings on them, and speak about the culture that once lived here a long time ago.


For our first Jaunt, we went to a small town called Inverurie. We went to the visitors center here, and found two charming men who told us all about the area and where to find some of these stones. In Inverurie, amidst a small development that appears quite new is the Brandsbutt Pictish Stone. It has been somewhat restored, and has carved on it what looks like a worm getting crushed by a very large slice of apple. It also has an inscription written along the side in the written language they used back then (the slashes on the line on the left) it spells "IRATADDOARENS" whatever that means.
Following this, we went on a bit of a wild goose chase to find the Broomend of Crichie, which is nestled right next to a BP petrol station about a mile from Inverurie. The man at the visitor center described the stone as being in walking distance from the visitors center. I assure you, it would have been quite a walk, had we tried. For the life of us, we could not remember any of the directions that he gave other than the fact that it was over a bridge, which there are about 5 of in the area. It took about 1 hour to find, but we did it.


Then we went to search for the Maiden Stone, which is a very neat stone with beautifully crafted pictures on it. Unfortunately, we made a mistaken turn and ended up on this road, which was a pretty big adventure. We went off the GPS roads for a while, and somehow made it back to civilization. It took us about 45 minutes, though.

Eventually, we found the Maiden stone, which was only about a 1/4 mile from the place we made the wrong turn. It was beautiful.

We then proceeded to the Loanhead of Daviot, which is a cairn surrounded by stones, and next to the circle is a 20 ton boulder that took 90 people to place where it is today. This was one of the more beautiful things we saw today.

We then saw the Pickney stone which is just in the middle of a big field.

And we finished our journey with a visit to Dunnideer fort, which was situated on the top of a gigantic hill, with the most spectacular view of the countryside. A perfect way to say goodbye to this beautiful landscape.

On our way to attempt to find another set of stones, we encountered a rainbow. We took this as a sign that it was time for our trip to be over, and headed back in the direction of home to get our last helping of fish and chips.

We had our final feast at the Cocket Hat, which was a big maze of a restaurant.

We said our goodbyes to Katherine and Graham

and got on a plane heading back across the pond.

Today, we're spending the day getting resituated into our lives back home, and we'll be composing a slideshow of all the most amazing bits of the trip.