Scotland autumn trip

What do you do to wow a special friend on a week visit to the UK in the middle of autumn? Tour the width of Scotland in 5 days of course !

Having been to Scotland a few times before I knew most of the places I planned to visit with the Isle of Skye being the one place I hadn’t been to since owning a camera.

Packing our nifty little Nissan Micra with some tattered road maps and scribbled sticky notes of what we wanted to see and where we planned to sleep we hit up the beautiful city of Edinburgh.

 

 

As it turned out Edinburgh was preparing to celebrate the 200th anniversary of The Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society!

 

 

 

 

Onward through the town of Inverness it really becomes apparent just how huge Loch Ness really is – it takes a good hour of solid driving to cover the length of the famous lake, with plenty of sights to see along the way. Not ones for overcrowded tourist attractions we gave the famous Urquhart castle a miss to concentrate on the more natural parts of the lake.

 

 

 

On our way to Skye we visited what must be one of the very best places to drive through anywhere in the world – Glencoe. Not satisfied with simply being there we got the treat of perfect weather – patchy clouds and a bit of mist here and there, the Scottish highland really was showing us itself in its very best form.

 

The famous Eilean Donan castle was there as always with its beautiful stonework. A place perhaps as romantic as it is savage in its appearance, no one forgets their visit there !

 

 

 

Arriving in Skye and getting through the better part of our (rather large) beer collection from the Black Isle brewery in the evening we woke up to a beautiful mirror-like Loch Portree. Not the worst of sights for a sore head!

It is often said that Skye is Scotland compressed into a small island. While in some ways I would disagree, Skye is indeed very special. If you only had one day to see Scotland, this is most definitely the place you would go.

Finishing up in the familiar-for-me Kinlochleven proved to be a refreshing experience. It seems the stress and miserable weather of a full-on 2 week field trip there didn’t allow me to fully appreciate the picturesque area!

 

And so our little trip was finished! Whilst time does fly when times and the company are good it felt like we had seen so much and driven so far that we’d been at it for weeks, yet a mere 5 days later we were back in London, already wishing for more!

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Ireland trip

4 day whistle stop tour of Ireland. Ferry landing at Rosslare, up through Dublin, Drogheda, Belfast, Giant’s causeway, Derry, Donegal, Galway, Conemara, Cliffs of Moher, back through Limerick, Kilkenny and off home! And it only rained once!!

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