For serious, this tour was something incredibly awesome and I’m not a big fan for going on group tours. Of course, we left from Edinburgh and drove up to a little area called Doune – we didn’t really go through a true town, but everything that was there was absolutely gorgeous. After an hour and a half we stopped at a place in Doune that was mostly a sheep farm but also had a little caffè and a huge antique/gift shop. There were so many little lambs out in the pastures my mom and I almost had a heart attack and for sure I got loads of pictures of them running around.
From here we all swapped buses – a group from Glasgow had joined us here – and we continued on up towards a town called Callendar. This is where Sir Walter Scott was from and described it a lot in his writings. Of course, this made it quite touristy but whatever – what made me excited was the transition up into the Highlands. Right outside of Callendar there was a windy road that suddenly climbed these mountains. What was even more bizarre was that we passed this invisible line that marked an immediate transition from the lowlands to the highlands – everything changed: the trees, the rocks, the weather, the people. In fact, just was we crossed this border, a local totally flipped us off as we passed his driveway. Haha… oh, highlanders.
I lasted about another two hours watching the land go by. I can not tell you how dramatically this country changes in just an hour’s drive! We entered the highlands, and yes there were hills and mountains. When we got to Rannoch Moore – oh my god. I will have to go back and get a rent-a-car because this place was too gorgeous to not photograph. With much shame, I couldn’t keep my eyes open and fell asleep for about an hour. And when I woke up I saw the most incredible scenery! Lucky for me, the bus pulled over and let us check everything out for about fifteen minutes.
Now was when we would drive through Glen Coe and start seeing a million and a half lochs – amazing!
Fort William was a nice place, but Loch Ness was a bazillion times better. I really never thought that I would be standing at Urquhart Castle gazing over age-old castle railings across Loch Ness. Maybe it’s because we actually took a boat across the loch, but Loch Ness really is a little bit creepy in a cool sort of way. I mean, the water is legitimately black… lakes typically don’t have BLACK water.
From Loch Ness we went up to Inverness and spent an hour wandering around, grabbing a bite to eat, and taking in a small portion of the city. I really wish, though, that we had more time there.
Now was the time to start heading back down to Edinburgh… and we only had one stop between there and Inverness in a place called Perthshire just north of Perth. I’m glad we got to stretch our legs and we also got some shortbread biscuits and fudge – both locally made. After we bough this, my mum and I found a pasture two steps down the road and made friends with an absolutely adorable sorrel horse who we named Rusty. He tried one of our biscuits and didn’t like it too much but still enjoyed scratches and pats on the face.
I think we rolled into the bus station around 20:30-20:45 – that’s twelve hours of driving, well… riding, around the country! And I’m so glad we went on that tour – we wouldn’t have seen that much of the country if we hadn’t gone.
At least I don’t have to get up at the crack of dawn tomorrow… my flight doesn’t leave ‘till 1:15 – YAY!
0 comments:
Post a Comment