Ellon, Aberdeenshire

Monday 23rd – Tuesday 24th August

First stop of our Scotland road trip was Vikki’s home town Ellon, Aberdeenshire.

Day 1

We headed from the airport to Ellon and after a quick stop past Tesco to get a bunch of flowers we arrived at Vikki’s mums for lunch where we made a plan for a walk along Newburgh beach to see the famous seals and then coffee and cake at the Udny Arms new cafe…well, that was the plan but not quite how things panned out!

The weather held up and we had a lovely walk along the beach, sadly we saw very few seals thanks to some tourists going onto the beach where they shouldn’t and scaring them all into the sea. However we walked pretty far, saw a few seals in the water, Steve chased some seagulls and took lots of lovely photos. Oh and he managed to keep his shoes dry and may have taken a detour behind the sand dunes mid walk!

Next we went to the Udny Arms new cafe for coffee and cake to discover it was closed on Mondays, so we went for plan b and headed back to Ellon to go to The Coffee Apothecary instead (with a slight detour down a random street en route). Steve’s first experience of Ellon and we parked up and walked to the Apothecary only to be told they were closing in the less than 10mins so plan c came into action – take away cake to go with coffee back home!!

After coffee and cake was a walking tour round Ellon of all Vikki’s childhood landmarks, including nursery, primary school, academy (well the empty plots of land!), family house, first house and local park. After the walk we had a well earned G&T and beer before heading out for dinner…with Steve pouring his beer all over the living room table, not once but twice!

A quick walk to Brewdog, past HQ (pausing for the obligatory selfie for Steve) and we fought our way through the crowds to our table! Due to covid meaning a lack of staff we only had the pizza menu available (and it was a rather unusual set of choices), Steve’s was rather spicy and Vikki’s was rather floppy but the beer and gin made them better. Vikki decided to try a new gin but her palette wasn’t good enough to be able to detect the cactus in the cactus and lime gin!

We were the last to leave Brewdog and headed home for another drink before bed and to educate Steve on the use of a teaspoon for opening windows.

We woke up to beautiful blue skies and sunshine, lovely start to the day with coffee and breakfast in the garden before packing up the car (and quite a bit of faffing) and heading off to destination number two, Aviemore.