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Dawn [0:00 – 0:49]: Welcome to episode two of Scottish Digest. In this episode, we will be speaking to Stefanie from the podcast Scottish and scared, who will be talking to us about our favourite places in Scotland being Cromarty and Millport. Stefanie is the host of the podcast Scottish and scared, where she discusses everything from haunted castles to ghost stories and mythological creatures from across Scotland. So if you’re interested in scottish history, horror, or just love a good ghost story, this is the podcast for you.

 

Stefanie [0:49 – 1:17]: So today, my lovelies, we are back in the wonderful city of Edinburgh. We are going to be talking about the Edinburgh vaults. You may have heard of them before, they’ve been investigated by ghost adventures most haunted, and we all know how I feel about those shows, but yes, they are renowned for being extremely haunted and are open to the public for tours. I myself have been on a tour of the vaults and had what I would consider a very strange experience. So I’ll tell you all about that later on in the show.

 

Dawn [1:17 – 1:21]: Hiya, Stefanie. It’s really great to have you on the podcast. How are you doing?

 

Stefanie [1:22 – 1:24]: I’m absolutely great. How are you?

 

Dawn [1:24 – 1:34]: I’m really good. Pleased to be speaking to you again. It’s been. It’s been a year since I’ve last seen you, mind, it was at the ghost hunt was the last time I’ve seen you. That was about this time last year, wasn’t it?

 

Stefanie [1:34 – 1:42]: Yeah. I can’t believe that’s been a year. Doesn’t feel like a year, this entire year. I just think it. I’m like, it’s November. What? It was November.

 

Dawn [1:43 – 1:52]: I know, aye. So, steph, before we talk about your favourite places in Scotland, can you just tell us a bit about you and Scottish and scared?

 

Stefanie [1:52 – 2:18]: Yep. So I’m Stefanie, I’m the host of the scottish and Scared podcast, and it is just a podcast talking about scottish history, scottish folklore, scottish myths, legends, ghost stories, haunted castles, all the creepy stuff that people want to know about Scotland. So, yeah, it’s about. It’s about all that kind of stuff. So if you like ghost stories or you just like history, it’s probably a good podcast for you listening.

 

Dawn [2:18 – 2:22]: And you’ve got a great accent as well, so that’s nice to listen as well.

 

Stefanie [2:24 – 2:25]: I’ve got a niche.

 

Dawn [2:25 – 2:38]: You do, you do. Brilliant. So you’ve got a couple of places you want to talk about today, isn’t there? So can you tell us what’s your first favourite place that you like to visit and why?

 

Stefanie [2:39 – 3:34]: So, my first favourite place is the wee village of Cromartie, and it is about a four hour drive from Glasgow, so that’s where I live. So it’s about a four hour drive north of Glasgow. The drive alone is beautiful. You go through Glencoe and stuff, you get to see the mountains, the wildlife. It’s honestly really, really stunning. We decided to go there last year in the summer when Scotland had that really nice summer, and we just decided to go see some places in Scotland that we’ve been talking about. I think it’s a bit different, actually getting the vibe of the place, rather than just looking at pictures and stuff. So one of the places that my cousin had researched was a place called the pirates graveyard. So we weren’t actually sure where it was. We just knew it was called the pirates graveyard, looked at a wee bit more, seen that it was in Cromarty, and then just decided to go. So, like I say, it’s a bit.

 

Dawn [3:34 – 3:39]: You’d never been to Cromarty before, had you? Because I’d not even heard of it. Until you said I was exactly the.

 

Stefanie [3:39 – 3:48]: Same, I’d never really heard of it. I’d never even really heard of the Black Isle either, because it’s located on the eastern point of the black Isle. I’d never even heard of that.

 

Dawn [3:48 – 3:51]: Neither did I, I’m ashamed to say. I was like, ah, that’s all right.

 

Stefanie [3:53 – 4:23]: I know it was shameful, but, yeah, it’s about a four hour drive north of Glasgow, like I say. And it’s. It’s one of the villages where it’s like one road in, one road out, and it’s. It’s very off the beaten path, it’s big wind and country road, so again, it’s a beautiful drive, but it’s a really small, like, 18th century kind of village and it’s only got a population about 700, so that’s not a lot, considering me coming to the big city of Glasgow is like, what I know.

 

Dawn [4:23 – 4:26]: Everybody will know everybody’s business, definitely.

 

Stefanie [4:26 – 4:30]: Well, definitely. We got there and people were staying quite a bit, so.

 

Dawn [4:30 – 4:35]: And friendly, because obviously Scots are always scottish, people are always friendly, so.

 

Stefanie [4:35 – 4:50]: Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, a lot of people were just driving by the cars, just staring at me, but, I mean, I do look a bit like, what is that? Walking over there in the best way possible. In the best way possible.

 

Dawn [4:51 – 4:57]: Hey, Stefanie, what do you mean? You got your tattoos, haven’t you? Is that what you’re meaning?

 

Stefanie [4:57 – 5:04]: Yeah, because it was. It was a height this summer, so obviously you have everything that people don’t usually see, so everybody was about like, oh, where’s that?

 

Dawn [5:05 – 5:15]: And you like to wear, you know, you like to be like Halloween, don’t you? Because we’re supposed to. You were going to do a Halloween party and I said, oh, I don’t know what I’ll dress up as. And you said, I always look like Halloween.

 

Stefanie [5:15 – 5:25]: Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, I think of people that know me would class me as goth, but, I mean, I’m just. Halloween is my aesthetic. Really. Halloween in horror movies?

 

Dawn [5:27 – 5:34]: Oh, I like that. But I. So tell us, what was it like? So it was just this one street going in and out.

 

Stefanie [5:34 – 6:26]: So it was one road going in. And then when you. You’ll know when you get to the village, because it’s. You’ll see there’s an oil rig just, like, off the coast, like this huge, big oil rig. And I spoke to my dad about it because my dad knows a lot about that kind of stuff. And he said that that’s kind of where they go when they get, like, decommissioned and stuff. So you’ll see them, like, just in the water. So you’ll see them first, and then you obviously see the village, but there’s, like, a small wee car park just as you pull in. So if you just pull into the car park, that’s what we did. And then we just go and kind of explored a wee bit. But it’s just. It’s a really beautiful weed wee village. It’s. There’s a lot of mix of, like, different buildings. There’s townhouses, like, really grand looking townhouses. And then you’ve got, like, small cottages, you’ve got thatched roof cottages, and then you’ve got, like, wee fishermen cottages that are all, like, painted different colours. So it’s just really beautiful place to just wander about and have a wee look.

 

Dawn [6:26 – 6:30]: All right, mix. So where did you go? What did you see when you were there, then?

 

Stefanie [6:31 – 8:15]: So we were looking for the. The pirate’s graveyard, but we didn’t actually. We can actually see it on a map because it’s not called the pirate’s graveyard. It’s actually called St. Regulus’s graveyard. So we didn’t know that. So we were walking about this town. We didn’t want to ask anybody because we didn’t want to look weird. Why are they looking for graveyard? So we just kind of explored to be back. There was loads of shops and stuff, and there was a courthouse in the middle of the village that we thought was a church because it kind of looks quite church like. So we just thought, oh, well, there must be a. There must be a graveyard here somewhere. So we went into this, like, back path behind this big grand courthouse and we walked up this big massive hill and it was roasting. But we did get to the top. The graveyard wasn’t there, but there was another graveyard at the top. And I don’t know if there’s war memorials and stuff there, but it’s just loads and loads and loads of graves. There’s like a. It looks like it used to be an old chapel or something and it’s like ruined now, but it’s really beautiful. I took some pictures and stuff and then we had to walk all the way back to the village to find out where this graveyard was. But if you walk to the end, if you’re in the middle of the village and you walk to the end of Church street, you’ll find there’s a wee church called East Church. And it’s got a cemetery as well. And it’s a really beautiful cemetery. There’s also, like, it’s just very that vibrant. Loads of overgrown trees, grass, and the graves are all mossy and stuff like that. So that’s a really beautiful wee cemetery. If you’re into that kind of thing, you can go in there. And I think you actually go into the church as well. I think it was like one of the first presbyterian churches that was ever built in Scotland or something like that.

 

Dawn [8:16 – 8:21]: Is that the church that you sent? Because you sent me a lot of photos. Is that one of the wee steeple at the front of it?

 

Stefanie [8:22 – 9:26]: No, that’s the. That’s the courthouse we thought was a church. But this church is a wee bit. Is a bit further down. But again, I think you can go inside and you can do tours and stuff and they’ll tell you about different history and stuff. But because we were there for one thing, we didn’t really look at a lot of stuff. We just were there to do that one thing. But eventually we asked. We were into a wee pub that was in the middle of the village and asked the bar maid and she was like, oh, no, it’s here. So if you’re looking for it and you’re in the middle of the village, you want to just walk straight to the bowling green. There’s like a bowling green in the far side the village, and once you see the bowling green, there’s like this really big hill and really steep hill. There’s not a lot of signage, but if you just follow the hill, you’ll come to this, like, really eerie looking tunnel. And it’s like. It’s got a locked gate on it and stuff like that. It’s really dark. It looks really scary. And that’s the servants tunnel. And that actually leads to Cromarty House, but it’s obviously not in use anymore, so it’s all kind of, like, gated up, but it’s very creepy. It’s supposed to be haunted as well, so we took a lot of pictures of that as well.

 

Dawn [9:26 – 9:30]: You can’t get close to it. There’s a. You know, I love these old, scary places.

 

Stefanie [9:30 – 9:30]: Yeah.

 

Dawn [9:30 – 9:32]: Can’t get close to it at all.

 

Stefanie [9:33 – 10:03]: I’m not sure if you can go to Cromwell House, if you can go there. We never really looked at it that much, but I know that that tunnel is there. So if you’re looking for the graveyard, once you see the tunnel on your right, there’s like, a small, like, stony staircase to your left. It’s really hard to miss because it’s just in between all the bushes and stuff. But if you follow that staircase, it will take you into the pirates graveyard. So that’s. We eventually got there sweating, warm, moaning so is it.

 

Dawn [10:04 – 10:12]: Is it. Okay, I’m going to ask a stupid question. Is it called the pirates graveyard because it’s. Pirates are buried there. Well, what’s the story?

 

Stefanie [10:12 – 10:46]: Funnily enough, there are no pirates buried there. But the reason that it’s called the pirates graveyard is because I would say, like, 80% of the graves in there, they have memento mori carved onto them. If you don’t know what memento Mori is, just this kind of, like, artistic trope that you usually see on, like, really mediaeval graves. You can sometimes see it on masonry, you sometimes see it in art and stuff like that, but it almost always has skull and crossbones. You have seen the skull and crossbones, probably, and stuff.

 

Dawn [10:46 – 10:50]: Oh, I can see on one of them, I’m looking at eye. I can see the skull and cross bones.

 

Stefanie [10:50 – 11:26]: Yeah. So you usually. Momentum worry will always have a skull and crossbones, and that just kind of symbolises the inevitability of death and. But can sometimes the other. They include other symbols as well, like hourglasses and bells and stuff. That just depends what kind of person designed it and stuff. But obviously, momentum warrior is latin for remember, you will die. So that’s why this graveyard is called the pirates graveyard, just because they are the skull and crossbones. But it’s quite fitting, though, because when you’re in that graveyard, you can. It’s like. It’s on, like, a steep hill and it looks at onto the ocean. So it’s like very like pirates of tea.

 

Dawn [11:27 – 11:41]: So is this the picture? Because I know you’ve got a couple of places. So is the street. I’m looking. Is it right by the water? I’m looking at the pictures you sent me. Is it got a beach by?

 

Stefanie [11:41 – 11:42]: Yeah, crawl by. It’s got a beach.

 

Dawn [11:42 – 11:43]: It’s h. Right.

 

Stefanie [11:43 – 11:51]: The entire village is basically on the waterfront, so you can walk along the entire village. Majority on the water.

 

Dawn [11:51 – 11:54]: Hey, it looks really nice. It looks beautiful. Jay Yard.

 

Stefanie [11:55 – 12:12]: It is a really stunning place. I really like to go back. Like I say, they do loads of stuff that we never even knew that they did. They do like wildlife tours. You can see dolphins and stuff. They have a cinema. They have loads and loads and loads of stuff today. It’s definitely worth a wee drive in the summer.

 

Dawn [12:13 – 12:18]: Not scorching hot and not wearing a big black jacket in the summer.

 

Stefanie [12:18 – 12:42]: No, but we went to. Once we had our adventure and stuff, we went into the Fishertown Inn as well, which was just like a wee local pub that just had, like, really simple comfort pub food. And it was really, really nice. It was like cosy. The bartender came over, the owner came over on Saturdays and spoke to us and stuff. So it’s a really nice, welcoming place. So, yeah, I highly recommend.

 

Dawn [12:42 – 12:52]: And it’s not sort of a tourist destination, is it? I mean, like I said, I hadn’t heard of it before. You hadn’t? It’s not. Did you see. Was it busy when you. When you got there? Were you seeing a lot of tourists?

 

Stefanie [12:52 – 13:12]: There was a lot of cars in the car park, but it was. It wasn’t even busy. Like, you could walk and go see somebody for a couple of minutes. It wasn’t like pandemonium or anything. It’s like air or something like that during the summer. So as I think that’s due to the fact that it’s like a four door driveway. Classical so. But it is really, really stunning. Really, really beautiful.

 

Dawn [13:12 – 13:21]: And it’s not far from Inverness. It’s about 40 minutes drive from Inverness, I think. So it’s not. It’s not that awfully beaten track. Or is it. When is it. Is it wee roads you’re on or.

 

Stefanie [13:22 – 13:40]: Yeah, it’s like big open fields are just like grass and trees and stuff, like, on the way in. It’s just like a country road, but it’s very open. There’s lots of, like, fields and there’s like a wee place you can stop just before you get to cromry and it’s like a wee. You know those vending machines you see sometimes that sell, like, vegetables and eggs and milk? One of them.

 

Dawn [13:40 – 13:51]: Weird that when I found out about that, I’m like, what, in a vending machine? And did you stay over or did you just stay for the day, a few hours?

 

Stefanie [13:51 – 14:38]: No, we just. We just went for the day. We just went to take a few pictures and look at. We about. Speak to some of the people that were there. The people are really, like, if you have any questions or anything, like we asked about in the pirate’s graveyard, there’s like. There’s like a slope in the middle that you can walk down and there’s a crypt at the bottom of it and you can go inside it and there’s like four graves inside it, like, really small ones. And it was a bit odd. And we were. We asked, obviously, what it was and apparently there used to be like a. Like a chapel in front on top of it that’s obviously no longer there. So, like, just. You can ask people, they’re no, like, oh, God, tourists. They’re quite happy to just sit and have a week at me and talk about stuff and so I really enjoyed it.

 

Dawn [14:38 – 14:46]: It sounds lovely. Sounds. I like that. And going by the pictures, it looks beautiful. And didn’t even know it existed.

 

Stefanie [14:47 – 14:48]: Neither did we.

 

Dawn [14:49 – 14:53]: All right, then. So tell us about your second place.

 

Stefanie [14:53 – 15:24]: So my second favourite place is the famous Malcolm. It’s my favourite because as a kid, I think a lot of people my age that are from here, we have a great aunt and a great uncle who don’t have kids, so they just treated us like their kids. And they used to take us to Malport, like, every second weekend or something like that, especially during the summer. So we spent a lot of our summers on Malport, like, doing the bike rides and crocodile rock and all that kind of stuff.

 

Dawn [15:25 – 15:31]: First of all, tell us where. About how far away from Glasgow is that, then? How long did it take you to get there? Because it’s over the ferry, isn’t it?

 

Stefanie [15:32 – 15:58]: Yeah. I’m not really sure, to be honest. I’ve not been in a very long time. I know that. It’s obviously, you get the ferry from Largs, so I don’t know how long it is for Glasgow to larks. I’m terrible with distances, by the way. Miles have lost on me the idea. But you get to largs and you get the ferry for largs, but I’m not really sure how long that entire distance is.

 

Dawn [15:59 – 16:18]: I didn’t. It’s another place I didn’t know about at all. I didn’t. I didn’t know it was an island. I didn’t know it was near Arran, because I covered a case of my other podcast on Arran, and I didn’t. No idea. So it was just like, oh, I like this place. So tell us. You mentioned it. The crocodile rock. Tell us about the crocodile rock.

 

Stefanie [16:20 – 17:02]: I’m not going to be as fully information as I was about Cromwell, just because it is a childhood place. So I don’t really know much about it. But, yeah, on the beach in Malport, there’s this kind of rock that kind of protrudes from the water, and it’s. Somebody painted it, I don’t know how long ago, but it was there when I was a kid, and that was like 20 years ago. But there’s. They painted it to look like a crocodile, so it gets called crocodile rock, but when they see the tides up, it’s like, fully out of the water. You can climb on it, you can set up. We’ve got loads of. I’ll need to send you some. We’ve got loads of pictures sitting on the rock, but when the tides in, it looks like it’s in the water, so it’s actually quite terrifying.

 

Dawn [17:02 – 17:17]: Bloody. It looks really good. I like it. I was like, what the hell is this? So you said that you went there when you were like a kid? A lot of the time. So what. What did you get up to as kids? It’s kind of a family place. Is it?

 

Stefanie [17:17 – 18:16]: Yeah, it’s, um. We used to. They do this. I don’t know if they still do it, but they do this thing where you can ride it on the island on a bike. So you hire a bike and you just. It’s like a perfect circle. You just go around a circle and there’s loads of things to see. So we used to do that. And there’s the crocodile rock, and then there’s other rocks as well. Around the island. There’s a rock, I’m sure it’s called indian rock, and it’s. I think it was. The same person has painted, like, um, like a native american painting on the front of it, so it looks like a face. And so there’s, like, things like that, I’d say, but that’s huge. That’s, like, on the side of a cliff, and you can see that there’s lion rock, which is just like a big rock that comes up for the hillside. It looks like a line. So we used to do that. We used to just cycle down the island and, like, see the cows and, like, stop at the beach, collect seashells or that kind of gutsy family stuff. And then we would just go for, like, a wee lunch and a wee pub somewhere and then just sit on the beach for a while and go home.

 

Dawn [18:16 – 18:19]: Oh, so you didn’t stay there either? You were just there for.

 

Stefanie [18:19 – 18:34]: I’ve actually never stayed. My dad’s. They used to take my dad and my uncle when they were young as well. It was like a family thing. And they stayed quite a lot in, like, b and b’s and stuff. But we’ve never stayed. We’ve just. Because we had the car and stuff when we were young, we used to just hop back on the ferry and come home.

 

Dawn [18:35 – 18:51]: I like the sound of it being like, a perfect circle because I think it’s apparently called, like, the island of a thousand bicycles, because it’s just. I don’t know whether they’ve got a thousand of them they can rent. I’m not sure why, but it’s just like this. Beautiful. It must have been beautiful. I loved rides when I was young, honestly.

 

Stefanie [18:51 – 19:26]: It’s a really beautiful. The island is beautiful in general, but that ride, that site, I don’t think I could date at this age, if I’m being honest. I think I really like. Right, get the car. But it honestly is. It’s beautiful. And the only thing that I would say is there we had an incident on one of the bike journeys. My dad was standing too close to a tree and, like, puffins attacked them. And I don’t know if, like, there’s puffing mating season or something like that, or puffins have their eggs or something. My dad got attacked with puffins. So there’s puffins on the island as well.

 

Dawn [19:26 – 19:32]: Oh, I’ve never seen a puffin close up, so we didn’t want to see them that close.

 

Stefanie [19:32 – 19:33]: Very aggressive.

 

Dawn [19:33 – 19:36]: They’re only teensy little things as well, aren’t there?

 

Stefanie [19:36 – 19:55]: I think it’s maybe been nesting season or something like that, and my dad’s just got too close. But, yeah, there’s loads of wildlife. There’s rabbits, deer, and there’s a lot of farmland as well, in the root, so you can stop, like, pet cows and stuff like that. And there’s horses. So it’s a really beautiful journey, adventure.

 

Dawn [19:56 – 20:11]: And did you do anything else? Do you remember anything else? Do you remember visiting a wee cathedral or anything there? They’ve got. Apparently they’ve got the world’s or the island’s smallest cathedral, the smallest cathedral in the UK is on the island. Do you remember that?

 

Stefanie [20:11 – 20:33]: I’ve honestly, like, we never really did, like, touristy things. We just went there because it was like our whole families went there, like, since they were small and that was the majority. What we do is just sit on the beach, collect shells, crabs and the bikes and stuff. But I do want to go back as an adult, so I’ll definitely be writing some stuff done and checking it out when I’m there.

 

Dawn [20:33 – 20:38]: Oh, that’ll be good. It’ll be good to have you back on and find out the difference of when you were a kid and what it’s like now.

 

Stefanie [20:39 – 20:41]: Well, definitely no bike rides, I’ll tell you that.

 

Dawn [20:42 – 20:46]: Is it not flat or is it bottom? Hilly? Is it, like, hill?

 

Stefanie [20:46 – 20:52]: Some of it’s flat and it’s not like big, steep hills, obviously, but it’s an incline.

 

Dawn [20:54 – 21:00]: No, I’m not a fan of inclines. Can you get these electric ones now?

 

Stefanie [21:01 – 21:20]: Probably. It’s funny because me, my sister and my cousin used to. We were like, we threesome memorial. And my uncle, who used to take the car, he would drive her in the island, went beside us in the car, on the bikes, just to make sure we were all right. And every time my cousin and my sister would just get up and put the bikes in the boat and they would just get in the car and I would just begin.

 

Dawn [21:21 – 21:22]: Are you joking?

 

Stefanie [21:24 – 21:25]: I was like, I’m looking up.

 

Dawn [21:28 – 21:35]: I used sound like my sister. She’s like that. I remember her doing something similar, just, they would follow her with a car and she just would keep on going.

 

Stefanie [21:35 – 21:42]: Yep, I just loved it. I just love being outdoors and fresh air and the wildlife and the greenery. I just. I love all that.

 

Dawn [21:42 – 21:52]: And it’s different, I suppose, from where you are in Glasgow. Like you say, it’s like a city and then you’re out in the country just a lot. Like, it’s not far away, it’s not like 4 hours up the road. It’s like over the water, isn’t it?

 

Stefanie [21:52 – 22:09]: Yep. Glasgow, it’s just buildings. You don’t really see the sky. I know that sounds crazy, but, like, I can’t look at my window right now and see the sky. Like, there’s just buildings. But when you’re outside and you can actually look up and see the sky and the stars and stuff, it’s like so alien to people that live in the city.

 

Dawn [22:09 – 22:15]: Aye, the stars, because you don’t see that when you’re in the built up areas. But there’s so many of them.

 

Stefanie [22:16 – 22:21]: I went to. I went to Yorkshire a couple of years ago.

 

Dawn [22:21 – 22:22]: What was that for?

 

Stefanie [22:23 – 22:42]: I ended up with sepsis. So, from the water, no shade, Yorkshire. But, yeah, I was stupid. I didn’t realise that you couldn’t drink water in England. Well, some parts of England. I didn’t know that. Just being in Scotland my whole life and no ever travelling to England, I.

 

Dawn [22:42 – 22:42]: Didn’T know that either.

 

Stefanie [22:43 – 22:48]: I got really, really, really ill and I ended up having to be hospitalised when I came home and I had sepsis, so.

 

Dawn [22:48 – 22:51]: All right, then. So you’re definitely a scottish girl.

 

Stefanie [22:51 – 23:04]: He’s staying in Scotland, no shade, Yorkshire. But. Come on. But, yeah, when I went to Yorkshire, the stars, I was see just the stars, being able to see the sky like that, it was so alien, which is just bizarre.

 

Dawn [23:04 – 23:07]: I know. It’s a big world out there, isn’t it?

 

Stefanie [23:07 – 23:08]: Yep.

 

Dawn [23:08 – 23:15]: I know. You’re only there for the day. Did you ever be part of the raft race? The partners do raffle races there every year. Have you ever done that?

 

Stefanie [23:15 – 23:17]: Is that where you build the rafts?

 

Dawn [23:17 – 23:26]: I think so. It’s really competitive. There’s only seven people last year, I think. But they were really coming down to the wire. They were, like, going for it.

 

Stefanie [23:26 – 23:32]: I’ve seen that on the news and stuff, but I’ve never actually done it. I think my dad and my uncle mate, I did something like that when they were young.

 

Dawn [23:32 – 23:33]: I’m sure.

 

Stefanie [23:33 – 23:36]: I’ve seen pictures of them on the beach building stuff.

 

Dawn [23:36 – 23:38]: I think it’s from lurgs to Millport.

 

Stefanie [23:40 – 23:42]: See, I’ve just got so much to learn.

 

Dawn [23:42 – 23:45]: No, get yourself over there as an adult.

 

Stefanie [23:47 – 23:48]: I’ll report back.

 

Dawn [23:49 – 24:01]: So, anyway, Stefanie, it’s been really, really great speaking with you and hearing about Cromarty and Millport. So can you tell everybody, if they want to hear your lovely voice more, where they can find scottish and scared?

 

Stefanie [24:02 – 24:31]: So if you just go to our website, scottishandscared.com, you’ll find all our links on there. We. Our instagram’s on there. Everywhere that you can listen is on there. All the links. But, yeah, just your usual apple, Spotify, Google play, all that kind of stuff. That’s where you’ll get is. You can follow us on Instagram. That’s where we just put up a lot of stories and stuff there. Just things that we’re up to, events are coming up, all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, that’s where you can find us.

 

Dawn [24:35 – 28:49]: So, that was my week chat with Stefanie about Cromarty and Millport. Two of our favourite places in Scotland. While I think Stefanie did a fantastic job painting a picture of Cromarty and Millport, here’s some further information for you. Firstly, about Cromarty, which according to Wikipedia, is a town situated at the tip of the Black Isle on the southern shore of the mouth of the Cromarty and is about a 40 minutes drive north of Inverness. And according to cromartyartstrust.org dot Uk, Cromarty is the Highland’s best preserved historic town, having 209 listed buildings, including a lighthouse which was built by the uncle of Robert Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote the novel Treasure island. There’s also a thatched cottage and museum, which was the birthplace of Hugh Miller, who was a 19th century geologist. There’s also an 18th century courthouse museum you can visit, which according to cromertocourthouse.org dot Uk, you can come face to face with a tough Highland justice of the time, visit a prisoner and take part in a trial. It also has many exhibitions and collections to see if you’re a cheese lover. You’ll also find in Cromarty an award winning cheese shop where, according to scotlandbucketlist.com, you will find a great selection of authentic dutch cheese. Now, if you’re tempted to visit Cromarty after hearing about Stefanie’s visit there, then you might be interested to know that every march the Cromarty Film festival takes place, where you can expect to see a variety of different films from well known short independent films and those by scottish filmmakers. Next up is Milport. I personally really enjoyed hearing about the lion Rock, the indian rock and the Crocodile rock, which have been around for about 100 years, and cycling around the islands of Cumbri sounded idyllic. According to milport.org comma, the island of Cumbri is referred to as the island of a thousand bicycles simply because Cumbri is a paradise for cyclists. The island of Cumbri is located off the west coast of Scotland, about 36 miles, or 58 kilometres west of Glasgow, so quite near if you fancy a day trip to Millport, and during the summer months, the P’s Waverley, which is the last seagoing passenger carrying paddle steamer in the world, calls Millport twice a week on trips from Ayr in Glasgow, as well as visiting the iconic rocks while you’re visiting Millport, there’s also, as I mentioned, the smallest cathedral in the UK to visit, as well as the Garrison house, which is not far from the cathedral, which was built in 1745, and it also houses an impressive model railway. Theres also a home called the Wedge to visit, which according to Jacksaltstays dot co dot UK comma, was in the Guinness Book of Records for being one of the narrowest houses in the world at 47 inches or 119 centimetres. Although it has now lost the title of being the narrowest in the world, it still holds the title for being the narrowest house in Britain. Sadly, you arent able to go inside this house elsewhere on the island of Cumbria, Jacksaltstays dot co dot UK recommends visiting the Gladestone, which is located at the very top of the island and will give you 360 degree panoramic views of the island. And what about events? Well, I mentioned the Millport raft race in my chat with Stefanie, and after a two year break it began again in September 2023 where, according to Largs and millportnews.com comma, hundreds watched seven raft teams compete from Kames Bay to the pier head. If youre more interested in dry land events, then theres the Millport vintage scooter rally that also takes place over a weekend every September, with the weekend being packed with scooters and bands. Well, I hope you enjoyed hearing about Cromarty and Millport from Stefanie. If youd like to hear more about scottish haunted castles, ghost stories and mythological creatures, then as Stefanie said, you can find scottish and scared wherever you get your podcasts. You can find all links to everything mentioned in this episode by visiting clurinton.com scottishdigest. We hope you join us next time for another wee slice of Bonnie Scotland.