Aigas Field Center and Inverness

 We started yesterday with a visit to the Aigas Field Center : 

For over 40 years, Aigas has been offering small-group learning holidays and study courses exploring the stunning wildlife, habitats and landscapes of the Scottish Highlands. Our unique facilities, quality of service and knowledge are second to none

It was founded by Sir John Lister-Kaye, 8th Baronet, OBE, a British naturalist and nature writer. For many years it was run by he and his wife, Lady Lucy. Their daughter runs the place now, but she was out on Holiday so our hosts were Sir John and Lady Lucy themselves. The center is the home where they raised their seven children. It’s a large Victorian confection that was grafted onto a smaller Georgian manor house and then had a modern addition added by the present owners.

For us the attraction was not so much the wildlife or conservation aspects of the center, but our hosts themselves. Sir John gave us a tour of the house entertaining us with family history and anecdotes. He was very funny and presents as completely unpretentious. Still whether it was due to the displays and ancient family portraits or the people who cropped up in his anecdotes or our American reverence for the British nobility, we never forgot that he was SIR John Lister-Kaye, the 8th Baronet.

 Here is a picture of him with some other chap. Sir John is on the right. Not sure who the other fellow is.

And Sir John the raconteur:

After the house tour we sat down to an excellent lunch. 

Lady Lucy is a cordon bleu trained chef although these days she just oversees the Center chef instead of doing the cooking herself. After lunch she gave us a tour of the garden that she created and designed and told us more about their family and history. On the estate were groves of giant Sequoias and Douglas firs planted by the then owners of the estate (long story but this is not the ancestral home of the Lister-Kaye’s; that property was lost after World War II to eminent domain). Lady Lucy explained that when the Victorians traveled they brought back plants and seeds to grow to show off what far flung places they’d been, hence the North American trees. 

Lady Lucy:

After the garden tour we headed off to Inverness. For me, this was the only mis-step of the tour so far. We were turned loose in Inverness around 4:15 with instructions to be back on the bus at 8:00. The idea was that we would explore Inverness at our leisure and have dinner on our own. The only problem is that everything in town except the restaurants was closed by 5:00. And it didn’t help that there was quite a lot of the weather I promised I wasn’t going to talk about going on. But we managed. Victoria and I had dinner with Elizabet and Eva at a wood-fired pizza pub (they are mother/daughter from Sweden although Eva is now a US citizen; went to California for grad school and married an American). 

 After dinner it had stopped weathering and we got a walk along the river until it was time to leave.