Scottish Highlands

Thursday June 15, 2017

We landed in Glasgow around noon and customs took a while. The guy who checked us in asked if we "knew it was still cold here?" when he found out we were camping haha. The car rental place was excellent though. The lady did a good job upselling us to an SUV crossover haha. Still not sure how much we got ripped off. The extra space, GPS, and diesel fuel was appealing though... She kept saying how John wouldn't fit in such a tiny car.

Driving was super scary and stressful that first day. Props to John for managing it with a manual. His only, well, biggest, issue (for me) was hugging the left side of the road really badly. We curbed it a few times and I got really tense thinking he's going to hit cars or buildings, bridges, whatever on the left side. We were able to get to Callander without incident though.

We pit stopped at the cute little town of Callander to get some food and supplies, but parking took a minute because we had no cash to pay the meters. We finally found one covered in a GIANT puddle. Seeing John get out of that one was great haha. As he was doing so two ladies walked past in disbelief that someone had actually "parked in that miserable spot!"

Quick stops at a hardware store for fuel, an ATM for cash, and a grocery co-op for food and we were on our way again to the campground about 15 minutes away.

The campground was nice, with good facilities. We were the only tent when we pulled in, so got a sweet spot right by the river with no one around.

View from our tent

After setting up camp we went back to Callander to hike the Bracklin Falls loop. It was a 3.5 mile hike that took us through a lush forest...

...led us to a decent sized waterfall we could scramble around; the rocks were suuuuuper slick!

Over a cute footbridge...

and through a densely wooded area to a great overlook of a beautiful valley...

The overlook had this cute picnic table. A perfect place to stop and enjoy the view

Looking back at the wooded area we had walked through

...before spitting us out on the country road where we parked. It was a great little walk and felt good to stretch our legs after sitting all day. The weather is super volatile here though; it must have rained off and on about 50 times!

After the hike we went back to the campground for some dinner and hot chocolate cooked to perfection by yours truly. Then it was just a matter of cleaning the dishes, showering, and going to bed. While doing so we were able to enjoy the gorgeous sunset and lovely Scottish scenery. Our neighbors across the river consist of sheep and horses :). Overall not a bad first day in Scotland. I feel bad John couldn't enjoy the countryside as much while driving because it's pretty spectacular.

Not So Funny Things:

• I was bolstering up the tent with more lines and stakes (because it was windy with the chance of more rain) and got totally attacked by some midges. Oh it was bad. Tons and TONS of tiny little bites everywhere. I hope they go away. Midges man... they suck.

Friday June 16, 2017

I woke up pretty early today. Like 4 am early. It was light out so I thought it was around 7. I guess it doesn't stay dark for long here either? I couldn't sleep past 7, so started packing up which woke John. Oops. We were on the road by around 8:15 ish.

The drive to Glen Coe was very pretty. The wet and drizzly weather made the colors pop and the fog just added to the majesty of it all. At times we both agreed it may have been nice to see farther in the distance without the fog inhibiting our views. But I think overall it just added to the beauty and feel of the place.

Buachaille was really really cool. I now understand why it's the most photographed mountain in Scotland. For one, it's beautiful, but on top of that it's set on an amazing background! We pulled over at a great overlook and took some time basking in it's greatness and enjoying the views. All while snapping pictures of course.

After backtracking a bit we came to the turnoff for Etive More or the Skyfall road, as we called it, and began our drive down it. What a fun drive that was. At least for me haha. It was this tiny one lane road, but had hardly any traffic, so I think John was able to enjoy it as well.

We stopped a number of times to snap pics. We also stumbled on some sort of TV show or low budget movie. They had a part of the road blocked off for a bit and as we were driving through the section we saw a group of people with some high end camera equipment and then later on a nice sports car with two dolled up people sitting inside. Didn't recognize either of them though. Kinda fun.

We continued driving until we made it "all the way to the ocean," which was weird. We felt so far inland! To be fair, it was the most inland part of a large fjord type waterway, not an ocean beach.

Our next stop was the Meeting of the Three Sister's Waterfalls. We originally blew right past it, but the place we pulled off to turn around ended up having some pretty sweet views as well. We weren't sad about it.

The falls were kind of cool. It's such a pretty area any time you get the chance to stop and look around is a treat. Especially for stressed-out-driving John haha.

The rest of the drive to Old Inverlochy Castle was equally pretty, but we didn't stop again.

Inverlochy was our first castle citing, so we were pretty excited about it. In the grand scheme of things it's nothing super impressive, but we still enjoyed it. The cool thing about it is that it hasn't been touched since the 1400's! Crazy it's lasted so long.

Cool site, not very busy, and fun to explore. Always nice to stretch our legs too.

After Inverlochy we started heading towards Glen Nevis where our campground was. We made some poor decision (looking for free wifi) that got us stuck in some pretty nasty traffic. So what should have been a 20 minute drive ended up taking about an hour. (major eye roll) Ben Nevis is the tallest mountain in Scotland, possibly in the UK, and Glen Nevis is the valley right in it's shadow. Needless to say, it's a really cool spot.

We first dropped into the visitor's center to try to get some info on the area. Pretty much everyone I came across as I was browsing had just finished summiting the thing. An 8-10 hour affair. It looked really cool, had we the time I think it would have been something we'd really enjoy. Unfortunately we didn't. Everything I saw in the visitor's center had to do with summiting Ben Nevis though, so it wasn't very useful to us.

We continued up the road a few hundred meters to the caravan park. Man it was nice. We were able to find a trail map in the little store they had on site and bought it for a pound. Best pound we ever spent. After finding a decent spot to pitch our tent we took off up the road to the trailhead for hike number five I think it was.

I don't know if we lucked out on the trail we picked or if they're all phenomenal, but the one we went on was amazing! John described it as, "hewn right out o the side o the rock!" haha. A large portion of it consisted of a cool rock-stair pathway. The scenery was gorgeously green and lush with beautiful Scottish mountains surrounding us on all sides. We hardly saw anyone else on the trail too.

300 meter "waterslide"

At the end (for most) the trail opened up into a big valley with great views and massive waterfall crashing down the rocks. It was very cool weather and pretty wet and slick at times, but made for excellent hiking. I was definitely glad I brought my Gor-Tex hiking shoes though.

Along with the good hiking weather, the photography conditions were on point. We took a selfie (or a hundred) and as John was adjusting the camera to find a good angle he said, "We are just too cute." Haha, made me laugh.

We loved the area so much we decided to continue down the trail for another half hour or so. #no regrets

By the time we drove back to the campsite we were both hungry and didn't feel like camping meals or cooking so we decided to eat out. John 'yelped' it while I changed clothes and found the Ben Nevis Restaurant just down the road had great reviews and was within our price range. Score. It was a very nice place (as we passed it on our way to the trail head I figured it would be outrageously priced), but it had a cool atmosphere because everyone was dressed in their casual camping attire. Definitely my kind of place.

John got fish and chips while I tried the Glen Nevis Chicken. They both tasted really good after our hike. I'm preeeetttty sure my chicken had Haggis on it, which was a first for either of us. We decided to get dessert as well and wanted to try something local to the area so chose the Highland Cranachan. It was a honey/whiskey cream interspersed with raspberries and dusted with ground up oats. The oats were gross, so we scraped those off, but the rest of it was pretty good! Not what we were expecting as it wasn't very sweet. It also had some flavoring in it that we had never come across (possibly the whiskey? haha) but over all it was delicious. After eating our fill it was back to the campground for showers and bed. Unlimited hot showers at places like this are clutch.

Funny Things:

• We couldn't figure out how to leave the restaurant. We told the lady serving us we were done, but she never brought the bill! Finally, after waiting way too long, we saw some people get up and pay at the counter. We followed suit, and I think a bunch of people were in our same boat because multiple tables got up, paid, and left around the same time haha.
• Freaking out trying to figure out how to pronounce Cranachan so we could order it and trying to determine if we needed to tip. We failed on both accounts.
• We love Scottish accents and *attempting* to emulate them. We also feel like Scots are all really nice and friendly.

Saturday June 17, 2017

I had to wake John up again by packing, it's becoming kind of a routine. He slow. We were sad to leave the highlands. It's so pretty up there! We'd love to come back and do a whole trip designated to exploring the area. Alas it was time to head over to Edinburgh. Our final stop in the Highlands was the Queens View.

Queens View was tucked back on this twisty tiny road. It was a cute place, but we had to pay 2 pounds for parking. Lame. The over look was great, but we were there for maybe five minutes.

To make the parking fee more bearable we decided to go on a little hike "in the area" as well. I say "in the area" because a few minutes into the drive I plugged the coordinates into my phone, just to be safe, and out popped directions for a 45 MINUTE DRIVE! Lol. It was kind of in the direction we were headed, but still a good 20 minutes out of the way, and that wasn't even including the time it would take to hike the thing. The map made the trail look like it was just down the road. John even asked if we'd be able to walk to the trailhead HAHAHAH! Luckily we found another hike we could take just off of the main highway to Edinburgh.

This hike was very much OK. It had a good view overlooking the valley at the top, but nothing super spectacular. We saw some mountain bikers riding the trails though and that looked sweet. Wish we had brought ours. We also drove ourselves right into nicer weather and we both got pretty toasty on the trek. We had to roll our pants up like dorks haha.

More than anything it helped break up the drive and allow us to get out and stretch our legs. It also provided an excellent place for us to eat lunch and say goodbye to the highlands.