Our third festival day was another busy day. We would start around 11:30 at the Laichmoray hotel in Elgin, so we decided to sleep in and have a relaxed morning. Following the A941 up from Craigellachie, we arrived without any problems at the hotel, where a bus was waiting on us to tour us around…

We have had a great, but busy time at the Spirit of Speyside festival 2014. Many evenings ended with us crashing on the couch talking to our new friends with a fine dram, our feet up and a fire blazing in the fireplace, or we ended at the kitchen table, trying to get some text…

Day three (we were officially in holiday mood and lost track of what day it was), the car is getting heavier already, and with the places still to visit in mind, we feared that we needed to repack the car for our trip home, and use the backseats that we had left clear “for no…

After an easy boat ride, we landed in Newcastle at the predicted time of 9 in the morning, local time. Due to Ansgar’s perseverance of never being late for any appointment (read: we arrived three hours early in Ijmuiden), we had been amongst the first on board and were positioned with the bikers. First on…

Arran scenery When all excitement on Islay and Arran still on our minds, before we knew it we were home again. One thing was sure though – we would keep doing this and even expand our madness. The year already had been good, (it is only June 2013 in this timeline) but coming back from…

Arran scenery A week of driving around on Islay was good. Sadly, we missed Ardbeg day because of our boat left before the distillery could legally open their doors, but we managed to get one of the collectible Ardbog festival bottlings, that we opened once we arrived at the self catering house on the Isle of…

Bruichladdich sunshine A smooth boat ride to Islay on the first true morning of our vacation brought us to the magical island. We landed on Lagavulin day, but missed most of that because we needed to check in to the bothy first. Our real start would be the Sunday: Bruichladdich day. We could not have…

As can be seen in the first part, we had developed a serious taste for everything whisky: Distilleries (breweries too), festivals, nosings & tastings, whisky specialist shops and not in the least of all, Scotland. Although we were well aware that besides Scotland there are many more whisky producing countries, Scotland stole our hearts. Among…

It has never been much of a secret that Thomas liked a sip whisky every now and then. He has been drinking the stuff regularly and visited a festival every once in a while, and at the point where he was in between jobs he decided to investigate whisky on a deeper level. Keeping responsibility…