The Carlton Hotel at Edinburgh is the automobile hotel of Britain. There is nothing quite so good either in England or Scotland. The proof of this is that the Automobile Club de France have given it distinctive marks in its "Annuaire de l'Etranger." There is the tiny silhouette of a knife and fork, and four-poster bed, indicating that the tables and beds are of an agreeable excellence. This is a great deal more satisfying as a recommendation than Baedeker's.
We crossed the Firth of Forth via the Granton Ferry, from Granton to Burntisland,—pronounced Burnt Island—a fact that none of us knew previously.
Via Kinross and Loch Leven we arrived at Perth for lunch. We went to the Salutation Hotel, because of its celebrated "Prince Charlie Room," and had no reason to regret the lunch that was given us, or the price paid for it. Scottish hotels have had a reputation of not being as good as those of England and much more costly. We were finding things just the reverse. Automobilism is an industry in Scotland, not a fad, and the automobilist is catered for accordingly, at least so it seemed to us, and, since the leading British automobile is a Scotch production, who can deny that the Scot has grasped the salient points of the whole scheme of affairs in a far better manner than the Sassenach.
From Perth, through the very heart of the Scotch Highlands, we passed through Glen Garry and the Valley of the Spey. Cairn Gorm rose something over four thousand feet immediately on our right, when, turning abruptly northwest, we came into Inverness just at nightfall. It had been another long, hard day, and, since Perth, over indifferent roads.
The capital of the Highlands, Inverness, treated us very well at the Alexandra Hotel. As a summer or autumn resort Inverness has scarcely its equal in Britain. It is a lively, interesting, and picturesque town, and day lingers far on into the night by reason of its northern situation. Its temperature, moreover, for the most part of the year, is by no means as low as in many parts farther south.
From Inverness, via Dingwall, Tain, and Bonar Bridge, the roads improved, lying almost at sea-level. Here was a long sweep westward and then eastward again, around the Moray Firth, and it was not until we stopped at Helmsdale for lunch, 102 miles from Inverness, that we left the coastline road, and then only for a short distance.
Again at Berriedal we came to the coast, the surging, battering North Sea waves carving grimly every foot of the shore line. Lybster, Albster, and Thrumster were not even names that we had heard of previously, and we dashed through them at the legal limit, with only a glance of the eye at their quaintness and unworldliness.
Caithness is the most northern county of Scotland, and its metropolis is Wick, where one gets the nearest approach to the midnight sun that can be found with civilized, modern, and up-to-date surroundings.
The Scottish Automobile Club vouched for the accommodation of the Station Hotel, at Wick, and we had no occasion to question their judgment. (B. B. B., six shillings; which is cheap—though it costs you two shillings to stable your machine at a neighbouring garage.)