The heavy winds and storm of last night had past by the morning. We had slept in today as we knew it would be a short day to Pennan. We did manage to get up and packed up and out the door by 8 am. On the way out I took the key to the reception building (the owner's home) and he answered the door. They never did come by the rec room last night to collect any money and he didn't ask for any this morning, however I had put 20 pounds in a zip lock bag with the key that I handed him, so I am sure he will find it eventually. It was the least I could do for the hospitality they had afforded us last night in getting out of the wind and storm.
Because we had added extra miles on to each of the last few days, we only had 7.5 miles to get to Pennan. It was however all on the B road 9031 we had been on for the last mile yesterday.
You can see the cliff edge from the road, but there is no way to get out to it. The fence line for the farm fields is right up at the edge and any margin on the other side is taken up by gorse (the beautiful yellow flowered bushes with the very long sharp thorns. The entire area is owned by a conglomerate of farms under the Melrose name. For almost 4 miles all the farms belonged to them.
The B road was the official coastal trail path here. If someday there could be access along the cliff edge it would make for a spectacular walk.
The farms are for cattle and sheep. We must have been a novelty as the cattle would run to us when they saw us on the road and follow us for several yards. They must associate people on foot with being feed.
We caught up with John, Susan and Jane, just after Gardenstown where they had stayed last night. I knew they could only have been about 4 miles ahead of us and with us doing extra miles I thought we might see them again before the end. We thought about them a lot last night and Vicky and I hoped they were somewhere out of the weather as well. They had stayed in a B&B last night and were safe. We walked with them until we had to turn off for Pennan and they were heading on to Rosehearty
There is a steep decent from the B road to Pennan on the sea.
The Pennan Inn.
We arrived in town at 10:30 am and found that the Pennan Inn didn't open until 4 pm. I tried knocking loudly on the door to tell them "We had been traveling all night and we would like to check in and maybe eat something. We have an injured rabbit also"
"Ferness" Harbor, not much to do when the tide is out.
The tide is out.
The famous red phone box
So we spent some time walking around town- Up and down the street of 20 homes!
No cell phone service or Internet so I used the phone box to call Challenge Control in Montrose for the last of our 4 check in calls ( I thought maybe I should call Knox Oil and Gas)
It blasted water against the sea wall and made bigger and bigger spray. There were actually quite a few tourists in town, walking and taking pictures. Both Vicky and I thought that the inn would have done a very good lunch time business had it been open.
Vicky did manage to get us checked in early to our room
The Pennan Inn has just re-opened with these new owners (Husband - chef and Wife- bar and front of house) and they have spared no expense in making the rooms up to date and comfortable. The bathrooms were especially nice, again with lots of very hot water.
The view out our little portal window toward the sea.
We had a good shower and a clean up and then it was time for the bar to open so we headed down to check out the rest of the Inn.
The bar area was cozy and nice with a fireplace and they had lots of memorabilia of the movie Local Hero. I would have purchased a baseball cap, but they were sold out.
The dining room was just as lovely for our dinner. I checked to make sure that there was no Casserole De La Pan on the menu ("Is this my rabbit?... Yes I should have told you we don't allow animals in the bedroom... Trudy")
Vicky had the fish tonight
I had a recommended chicken curry stroganoff and it was delicious.
We both split an order of onion rings and of course we had a dessert.
I had a berry cheesecake and Vicky had an strawberry ice cream sundae
After chatting with the owners they almost bought the Boyne Hotel in Portsoy as well and they are planning to sell the Pennan Inn now that it is fixed up and are going to move back to the Orient where they also have a home and a restaurant.
I asked Vicky after dinner, just like the Americans in the movie "Should we buy Ferness Bay?"
"I will give you a dollar for every grain of sand I can hold in my hand"
I am so sorry I am late to this excellent post!
ReplyDeleteBrilliantly done, Craig. As a Local Hero fan myself I fell about laughing.
In the film they actually had a different (dummy) phone box away from the wall. Did you get zoomed by the guy on the moped?
:-)
"Ricky is on the road, you have to look both ways!" Thank you so much for such kind comments. It was actually surprising to me how many people (tourists), that we chatted with did not know about the movie. Oh well....it made our trip
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