Antiques Roadshow at Blair Castle

Yesterday saw me travel to my penultimate Roadshow – in Pitlochry, Scotland. After a couple of hours worth of delays on Sleazyjet due to a faulty plane, I found myself driving Judith Miller, Lennox Cato and Rupert Maas through the stunning Scottish countryside to the pretty town of Dunkeld. Our hotel (where I’m sitting typing this) was nestled in a picturesque valley but, with only moments to spare before dinner began, we had to rush straight off to Blair Castle, the venue for both our dinner and the Roadshow. We were lucky enough to dine in the ballroom, and were treated to haggis and beef as we sat amidst ancestral portraits, Landseer paintings, and what must have totaled a few hundred stag’s heads!
Today saw the Roadshow itself, and the image above shows ‘the calm before the storm’ at 9am this morning, just before the gates opened to let our increasingly long queue in. The picture below shows the event still going strong at 3pm when I managed to sneak off for a 10-minute lunch break upstairs in the castle. Just like Hopetoun House near Edinburgh last year, this was one of the busiest Roadshows I have experienced so far this year, but everyone who arrived before 4pm got to see a specialist. Fun as it most certainly was, to say I am exhausted right now is an understatement. As ever, our visitors queued patiently and were both warm and friendly. Specialists and visitors alike had a great day, with some truly great finds – tune in on Sunday evenings this Autumn to find out what. Even better, the storms of earlier in the week completely cleared to reveal a warm and shining sun, as you can see.