The next day, finally, the sun shines high in the sky and allows us to fully appreciate the colors of Scottish outback. We leave Kinross and we move across the kingdom of Fife where we admire the campaign and visit the Balvaird Castle: a small and very suggestive manor, almost disrupted and populated only by a herd of cows pasturing in the green.

The absolute silence of the countryside only broken by the rustle of wheat fields and the bellows of cows makes the atmosphere even more evocative.

Before moving the muzzle of our little car northwards we also take a visit to Perth, a nice town although without any distinctive mark.

Along our journey to Aberdeen we visit the Hermitage Forest close to Dunkeld (a typical small village on the River Tay, with its Cathedral of the ninth century), a dense forest of oaks and conifers where we admire the highest tree throughout the UK. A few steps from the road the forest becomes thick as seen in some old movie, we almost expect to see Robin Hood or Friar Tuck passing out of the trees at any moment! (well, at the end we only admire a deer who immediately flees into dense trees, frightened by our awkward attempt to photograph him).

We then move to Blair Atholl where we visit the Blair Castle that we judge not worthy of a visit also and especially for the huge number of wild embalmed animals exposed (deer, foxes, bears, the entire walls are literally covered with horns and to complete the work also a polar bear and the horn of a narval!) that the Dukes of Atholl had the habit of hunting. Even if the site is renowed on all important guides we remember it only for his bad taste while we appreciate much more the 'True' ruins of Castle Balvaird visited in the morning.

In the lawns in front of the castle we meet for the first time three angus calves (the famous Scottish cow, with its reddish hair and the huge horns)

We then move to Aberdeen where we have planned to spend the night. The lights of the warm late afternoon allow us to immortalize several glimpses of rural landscapes really charming.

Arrived in Aberdeen (now we have full confidence in the driving on the left and we move without problems) we spend the night in Roselea Hotel, a clean and welcoming B & B. Aberdeen in the evening is really cold and in the rooms of our B & B, the heating is switched on for a pleasant off-season (for us). The impact with the third city of Scotland is special: 'The Granite City' (so named because almost all the houses are built with solid granite blocks) with its desert dark alleys together with the weather that has worsened again and the chilly wind blowing from the North Sea make our first impression of the town particularly lugubrious.

For today is over, tomorrow our destination will be the Scottish Grampian!