Scotland: the land of beautiful scenery...

I had been looking forward to our 5 day driving trip (with Morgan's family) up to and around Scotland, and I was not left disappointed - it was absolutely, overwhelmingly, amazingly beautiful! Everything was SO GREEN. Our trip basically saw us drive up to Edinburgh for the first night, then drive up through the Highlands to Inverness, down the Loch Ness and just over the bridge to the Isle of Skye to stay in the tiny village of Kyleakin for the second night. The third day was spent driving around the Isle of Skye - 2 hours of which Tammy, Greg, Eliza and I were left stranded on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere with no phone reception (in an absolutely amazing place though!) whilst Morgan played good samaritan to some guy whose car had 2 busted tyres... everything is shut on a Sunday so they had to drive back to the mainland. After seeing most of the island we then left and drove down to Fort William where we spent night number 3. Fourth day we wandered down the west coast, through Glasgow, detoured off to find Hadrian's Wall (the drive there was through some of the most quaint and quiet little villages - so peaceful and delightful!), and then made our way to Lake Windermere for our last night in comfort in a B&B (all other nights were spent in hostels, the state of which declined from night-to-night). And finally, the fifth day we drove around the Lakes District some more and headed on back home with a quick detour into Birmingham to Cadbury World only to find it shut 1/2 hour before we arrived; however, the shop was still open so we stocked up on cadbury delights and drove home.

It was somewhat funny in that the fourth day of driving (down the west coast of Scotland) was planned to be our scenic part of the trip; however, the most amazing scenery was definitely seen beforehand. I was so overwhelmed with the landscapes that I would constantly be wanting to stop and take photos and video footage and regretted that I hadn't been able to film the entire journey, or take more photos. Unfortunately the roads don't really cater for people wanting to stop and take photos (tiny, narrow, windy roads) so we didn't get enough photos for my liking. I think I shall have to find a really good coffee table book of Scotland and the Lakes District to make myself happy! My favourite landscapes (in order) are these: driving from the bottom of the Loch Ness west to the Isle of Skye; driving around the Isle of Skye; driving through the Lakes District; driving down the west coast of Scotland; driving through the Highlands. The Highlands were far from what I expected too - I thought the enormity of the hills I saw driving out to the Isle of Skye covered in green grass would be what I would see in the Highlands. But the Highlands just seem to be exactly that "higher land" and there are lots of big hills, but with no trees or any green. Quite amazing really just how sparse it all is out there and how the landscapes differ throughout the country.

Other things of note:
- we shall have to revisit Edinburgh sometime as all we did was a really quick walk around the new side of town and down the Royal Mile in the old side of town. The old side of town is absolutely stunning. It's what I expected Paris to look like actually.
- There are heaps of cool castles all over the place - we stopped at quite a few and just wandered around and took photos. I really wanted to stay in one but they're pretty expensive :(
- We also saw 2 lots of cygnets (baby swans are so much cuter than adult ones!), highland cattle, belted cows, and various varieties of sheep (so many sheep, I thought I was in NZ!) - white with black heads, grey with white heads, brown sheep, normal white sheep; but unfortunately I didn't get to see any otters.
- the great thing about travelling in "summer" over here is that you get lots of daylight in a day which meant although we drove about 6-7 hours each day we still got to stop and see a lot!

All in all, I had an amazing time, and if you're into scenery like me, then I'd definitely recommend driving around the western side of Scotland!!
- esther :)

ps. we had only one decent CD, that was (fittingly) Roddy Woomble singing about Scotland, that we had on repeat throughout those 5 days - needless to say we won't be listening to it again anytime soon!


... photos here ...