Leakey's Bookshop, Inverness

Having spent a lot of this holiday driving around, we decided to have a lazy morning and the rest of the day in Inverness for a change and our first stop was at Leakey's Bookshop. It's the largest secondhand bookshop in Scotland, with over 100,000 volumes for sale and its own idiosyncratic style, which includes a huge log-burning stove surrounded by piles of logs (in a bookshop?!!) It also has a café where we enjoyed a nice lunch before browsing a small selection of the books.

Our next port of call was the Victorian Market, an indoor arcade with dozens of small shops and stalls selling everything you could wish for in a delightful original building.

A walk up to Inverness Castle to take in the views over the River Ness and the town completed our visit and then it was back to the car park to join the Friday night commuter traffic through the town. What a nightmare it was trying to find our way out of Inverness! We seemed to be driving round in circles for ages trying to find the right road and being distracted by so many one-way systems, none of which went our way:-)

It was such a relief to find the river and the castle and recognise where we were. The satnav was safely locked in the boot because I hadn't thought we'd need it, so that will teach me:-)

We spent the evening packing most of our stuff and generally tidying up, ready for an early (i.e. 9.30 am) start in the morning, as tomorrow is our last day in the cottage and we have to leave by 10 am. I fed Boxer, the Welsh pony, his last carrots and said a fond farewell:-)