At the end of August we traipsed to Perthshire for the Blair Atholl Horse Trials! We were both really excited because this was our first time back to Perth and Blair Atholl since our wedding three years go.
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| Perth train station, awaiting adventure! |
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| Supercute old time train station goodness. |
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| They were filming some kind of show on the train. |
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| Hooray! We made it! |
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| Hotel in the bustling metropolis of Blair Atholl. These dudes have a great carvery though. Saved us from waiting at the train station for the next train, which happened by only once every several hours... |
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| Ancient house? Let's stick a post office in it... |
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| Woo! Best castle ever! (I'm admittedly biased) |
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| Almost there, just an epic driveway to go. |
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| Ominous weather didn't deter the horse lovers! |
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| The ground was a tad squishy, to put it mildly. |
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| Ahh yes, just as gorgeous as I remember. |
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| Castle + fat little pony gymkhana? Yes please! |
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| The venue was surrounded on all sides by these beautiful rolling hills of green. The forest around here is lush and dense, you half expect to see medieval kings hunting deer to ride by. |
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| So the horse trials are a three-day event comprised of dressage, cross-country, and show jumping. We unfortunately missed the dressage part, but we did manage to catch lower level show jumping (above), the cross-country and the show jumping test for the trials. This picture does not adequately portray how mucky and slippery the ground was. |
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| Seriously awesome. How can you not enjoy cross-country? |
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| What with the given'er all out pretty much the entire course. |
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| The crazy obstacles that test the bond between horse and rider, in addition to agility and balance. |
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| Getting to spend a day hurling yourself and a 1500 lb animal over solid fences. |
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| Crashing through water obstacles like nobody's business. |
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| Yeah, I was enjoying myself :). Mostly wish I was competing though... |
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| Just needs a few sheep :). |
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| Chillin' at the train station to head back to Perth after a fun day of horsies. |
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| This is our hotel in Perth. Wish I could see what it looked like in 1699! |
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| Awesome. |
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| The next day was a Sunday, so the trains weren't on a regular schedule. To pass the time we wandered around Perth, which holds a special place in our hearts as we spent a wonderful week in this pretty city with our families for our wedding. |
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| Two art galleries and a couple of museums, and the place has only a population of 44,000 people. |
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| These dudes make fabulous pizza for the late night crowd. |
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I stood at this bus stop in my wedding dress to avoid the rain after we were kicked out
of the bar we were planning on partying at post-wedding dinner because
it closed hella early on Wednesday nights. |
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| The bar we were kicked out of. |
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| My family's apartment was at the very top on the very right of this lovely building. It wasn't painted cream at the time though. |
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The Drinking Tree. Everyone felt that since we were in Europe, clearly it must be ok to drink
beer in public, so the tree was the spot. A few days later we noticed the signs around
the park stating that no, drinking in public was in fact illegal. Didn't deter anyone though! |
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| A small portion of the awesomeness that is North Inch Park. |
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| The slightly creepy-at-night alley to Brian's family's apartment. |
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| B's fam occupied this cute place, which was huge and and full of character on the inside. |
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| Bridge displaying various flood heights. |
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| Venue of our post-wedding dinner. Gorgeous old hotel. |
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| Yay, the River Tay! |
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| Such a beautiful river bank. |
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| With big willowy trees and stuff. *sigh* |
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| Our apartment was in that little block of buildings on the bank. |
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| We had many a good time wandering these streets back in 2009. |
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I mean really, with scenery like this, it's pretty difficult not to have
awesome wedding memories. |
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| We love you, Perth! |
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| Once back at Blair Castle, we came across some Highland bulls! |
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| And there was an oldentimey tractor competition. A way-old Massey-Ferguson won, for those into tractors. |
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| *WANT* |
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| Sleepy dog adeptly showing off his mom's handiwork (she makes bespoke luxury dog beds, collars, coats and other accessories). |
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| The clouds remained ominous pretty much the entire time, with the odd rain shower strong enough to require a quick dive into one of the trading stalls. |
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| Then, it was back to the show jumping finals. |
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| So much fun. |
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| If this little guy had been for sale, he'd be curled up with me right now on my couch! That face! Eeeeeee! |
We had a wonderful weekend in Perth and Blair Atholl. Everyone brought their dogs! Even if you're not a horse crazy person like me, there's so many fun things to see and do at the Horse Trials, I highly recommend it as a day out to anyone. Dogs and kids everywhere, great food, great crafts and local makers to check out (some amazing artists too, such as painters, glass blowers, metal workers, weavers), hunting stuff, fishing stuff, farming stuff, horse stuff, dog stuff. Pretty much everything a person could want, in a stunning setting. Just be sure to bring your wellies :)
