After several days in our little villa outside Glasgow, and much to Fi’s dismay, we packed up our stuff and headed to Inverness by way of Glen Coe and Fort William. We made a stop at The Drovers Inn (as described in my last post) and then hit the road. And what a scenic and dramatic road it is. First, it was raining cats and dogs for much of the way. At one point, we found ourselves on what seemed like a boggy plateau. There was water all around us. We couldn’t see anything in the distance due to the clouds and there was no where to pull off to take photos, so please take my word that it was just a surreal experience. John and I kept asking each other, “Where the heck are we?”
Eventually, things cleared a bit, we saw some inns here and there, and then we found ourselves at the Three Sisters at the head of Glen Coe. Glen Coe is famous not just for its amazing scenery (even when raining) but also for a massacre that occurred when the chief of Clan MacDonald showed up late to sign allegiance to England and the king dispatched members of Clan Campbell to kill them. The Campbells stayed with the MacDonald’s for days, then drew their swords. Some of them gave warning to the MacDonals, who then tried to escape, only to lose their lives to the elements, as the terrain in that area is quit rugged and the winters harsh. The big picture historical repercussions of the massacre are not so much that the MacDonalds and Cambells had a big feud (a la the Hatfields and McCoys of the the US), but that it marked the beginning of the Campbells rise to power over the MacDonalds, who previous sort of ruled most of the important parts of the highlands. All of these stories, many versions of them, can be found at almost all the touristy places we visited and in the mostly useless Lonely Planet Scotland book we had.
We stopped for photos of the Three Sisters and then continued to Fort William, Scotland’s Outdoor Capital (according to them). Fort William is the place to go if you want to hike Ben Nevis, the UK’s highest mountain. We couldn’t even see it because of the cloud cover, but I don’t mind. I saw it 20 years ago when I visited with my grandmother and the weather was a lot better in the latter part of July. We walked around Fort William’s pedestrian zone, had scones and tea, and visited an outdoor shop to see if we could find Fi a better fitting raincoat because hers is getting to small. No luck there, but we saw a tent we liked. We got back on the road up the Great Glen to Inverness, eventually getting stuck behind a large slow moving truck, then rush hour traffic in Inverness proper, and finally finding our way to Rowan Cottage on Easter Dalziel Farm, east of Inverness, where we stayed for several days.
John and me at the Three Sisters:
Two of the Three Sisters:
Coincidentally, I believe I have a very similar photo of the same location, but 20 years earlier, when I was in Scotland with my grandmother.
What Fi did for much of the drive, which meant not getting out or walking much:
The views at the top of Loch Leven:
No one was on this road, and we had the whole vista to ourselves, so we got out to take photos. Eventually a man and woman from England stopped by and took our photo for us. I commented that I looked tiny next to John, and the husband and wife revealed that they had a large height difference as well. The husband was taller than John and the wife was my height. We had a good laugh about how we were all so mismatched in height, and we continued on our way.
Fi making sure that Panda Baby is safe in her carseat:
She insisted that we go to the store to buy two bottles or sippy cups and two car seats for her babies, one each for Itty Bitty Baby and Panda Baby.
Fort William tourist trap...er I mean village:
Waiting for the tea and scones:
The wifi code was our car!
John saw this and said “It’s good to know that the Terminator found Fort William too.”
The driving day was a very long day and we learned that it always takes a lot longer to get anywhere in the UK than Google Directions tells you. For one thing, most, if not all, of the roads are two lanes, one lane in each direction. They twist and turn and curve, they are narrow, and no drives really fast except on the motorways. Second, there is a lot to see and do along the way, so we tended to make many stops, or sometimes few stops but for long periods of time. Third, you occasionally get stuck behind a truck that refuses to pull over. So instead of taking just over three hours to get from Glasgow to Inverness, it took us seven hours and change. Also, the streets in the city are also narrow with only one lane in each direction. There were backups at the roundabouts too, so we spent quite some time looking at an art gallery sign on a building and cursing the standstill. Eventually we made it out and east and found our way to the farm.
Easter Dalziel Farm is about halfway between Inverness and Nairn, down the road from Stewart Castle and a golf course that was holding the Scottish Open. It is ideally located for exploring the Cairngorms and everything east of Inverness, and even things that are north of Inverness, you just have to get through the city before the end of the workday. The cottage we stayed in was made of stone and had three bedroom (one “master” and two singles that were big enough for a twin bed and a desk and not much else). There was a living room/dining room, and a nice big bathroom. The kitchen was in the entry and TINY, but I was still able to cook dinner for us. Fi slept in our room in her pack-n-play because the other rooms were removed from our room. It was cozy and we enjoyed our time there. The owners live across the road and left a nice package of vanilla fudge that we ate. There was a large yard with outdoor toys that Fi enjoyed as soon as we arrived. Even though it was a little drizzly and the grass was really wet, we went and played while John found a Tesco and bought supplies.
There were two other cottages on the property, all connected, and I spoke with a mom of three from England who was staying there with her family for a week. They spent much of their time going to the beach. We were not really interested in that because A) It was cold, and B) we can bike to the beach in California, where it is much warmer in general. We thought it was funny that people from England went to Scotland to go to the beach. To each their own, I guess.
The washing machine is in the kitchen, in typical UK style, and yes, that is the entire kitchen. The refrigerator was a mini-fridge down the hall across from our bedroom door. The views from the kitchen windows were great, though. My photos of that are crappy, so I am not posting them.
The yard around the cottage:
The views around the cottage:
There were woods nearby, sheep and cattle. We could hear the sheep when we were outside, and sometimes I’d look out the window and they were right there, very close to our place. It never really got dark. Here are some fuzzy photos I took at 11pm:
We slept well and went to Urquhart (pronounced “Urk-art”) Castle along Loch Ness the next day. We had an early day for some reason, and arrived before the large coach tours, so we got to see the castle before it got very crowded. We also purchased an Explorer Pass at Dumbarton, so we were able to get in ahead of the line and did not have to pay anything extra. I highly recommend the Explorer Pass to anyone who thinks they will see a bunch of castles in a short period of time. The girl at Dumbarton let us in to Dumbarton for free and the pass was not activated until we got to Urquhart. The pass also got us into Edinburgh Castle ahead of the line (and saved us over an hour wait) and Sterling Castle. It cost less than the price of Edinburgh and Sterling, so we got four castles for less than the price of two. We got the “Three out of five” deal, which is supposed to be three castles in five days, but in keeping with the friendly theme, we got four castles in six days instead.
Urquhart is neat in that it has been built and sacked many times over. There is a neat display about the different incarnations of it. In the end, it was sort of a family home in the 1800s and then the lady of the house left it in disrepair until it was deeded to the government. I learned a lot of MacDonald history here as well, as they were a far reaching clan and held a lot of territory.
We explored the castle ruins and all its stairs:
Loch Ness (no monster in sight):
It was here I realized that my camera was set to 1600 ISO, but did not yet realize that there was also exposure compensation going on, as is evidenced by how washed out the photos are. I also switched from RAW to JPEG. You can see the photos going into the castle are really washed out, but the later photos are a lot less so.
One of the docents told me it is very rare to get a shot of the arch without any people in it:
Fi and her favorite thing, stairs:
Enjoying a scone with butter and jam in the castle cafe after:
Fi fell asleep as soon as we got in the car, so we decided to head out toward the Cairngorms. It was one of the best decisions we made during the whole trip but I will save it for the next post, which will also include Glen Affric and possibly driving to Edinburgh.
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