Scotland trip, Easter 2008

My second trip to Scotland, but this time I planned to discover more of it, not only Edinburgh and the surroundings. At first I thought about joining a 3-day or 4-day tour offered by Haggis or Macbackpackers. But after several discussions with some 'experts' on Scotland (thanks to Win and Collin), I decided to create my own trip, since I want more than what they offered :-P I almost did this trip alone, but I am lucky that Yuko would like to join me (thanks Yuko :-)). The funny thing is that since we knew each other from our German class, we get used to talk in German (even when we went out several times together). In fact, I just recently found out that she can speak English.., but German has already been our first language when talking to each other :-P So I was a bit wondering which language that we would use in this trip. It turned out that we still spoke German even when we were in Scotland. I can say that I improved my German in Scotland :-P

Prestwick-Edinburgh-Inverness

We started the trip in Wednesday evening after we arrived in Prestwick airport. We went directly to Edinburgh to stay overnight there. The next morning, we took bus to Rosslyn to visit Rosslyn Chapel (remember Da Vinci Code?). Rosslyn is a small town about 40 mins from Edinburgh and actually not only famous with its chapel but also because of Dolly, the famous clone sheep, that was cloned in Rosslyn Institute. We managed to return to Edinburgh around noon and had a walk around High Street and Edinburgh castle (and also visited some souvenir shops). We left Edinburgh for Inverness around 15:00 and arrived in Inverness in the evening (it was raining). Luckily the B&B that we booked was a very nice one. Catherine, the owner is very nice (and she gave us a big Scottish breakfast everyday).

Inverness-Culloden-Loch Ness

After a very good sleep, our first destination was Tourist Info Center. Our original plan was to go to Glen Affric and Loch Ness, but we found out that we just missed the bus to Canich (and it’s only twice daily :-(), so we decided to join a tour to Culloden battlefield and Loch Ness. Culloden battlefield visitor center was a nice one, though it was nothing too special, they really reconstructed the battlefield so we could imagine it. Good thing that now I know about Bonnie Prince Charlie and also that Culloden battlefield is the last hand-to-hand battle fought in British soil. In the afternoon we continued the journey to Loch Ness, visiting Urquhart castle.

Inverness-Kyle of Lochash-Portree (Isle of Skye)

We took train from Inverness to Kyle of Lochash the next day. The view was great especially because it was snowing. We continued our trip to Portree in Isle of Skye by bus; it was great view during the trip. We arrived in Portree around noon and after left our luggage in our B&B we decided to have a walk to Tourist Info Center. But again, we have to deal with the fact that we could not rely only on public transportation. Our only choice was to go to Aros visitor center, we decided to take walk there, only visited its shop and café, back to Portree, and it was quite heavy rain after that.

Portree-Fort William-Glencoe-Glasgow

After breakfast we still had sometime to walk a bit around Portree and we left for Glencoe around 11 by Citylink bus. It was four-hour trip, but I just realized when I was on the bus that actually we stop in Fort William (which is close to Glencoe already) for one hour to have lunch break. I was a bit worried about this trip because I do not know how the situation in Glencoe. I only know that the bus stops at Glencoe crossroad on the way from Portree to Glasgow. The plan was to take the next bus from Portree to Glasgow since we would stay overnight in Glasgow. It gave us about four hours to explore Glencoe. When we stopped in Fort William, I asked the driver how far the stop at Glencoe to the Glencoe visitor center. Instead of answering my question, he offered me to drop us in Glencoe visitor center and I was happy with that (since I thought that it must not that far away). As you might guess… the Glencoe bus stop is quite far away from the visitor center which is in the middle of nowhere. We passed through the bus stop first and we just realized it …Yuko and I only stared to each other, thinking how we could go back to the bus stop (for our trip to Glasgow). We could not see the pedestrian way…it was only highway with some hills and valley in the middle of nowhere. So.. the driver dropped us on the way to the visitor center (still have to walk to go there) with our luggage. A bit panic actually (I thought about hitchhike some cars that pass through the highway) but we still tried to enjoy the beautiful view of Glencoe with some snows at the hills, which reminds me of marmer cake and powder sugar on top of it, and for sure we were also busy taking some pics. We went to the shops (still with our luggage) and I asked the man there how to get to the village from the visitor center. Thankfully, there is a walk path from the visitor center to the village, which he said about 20 mins walk. To make the story short, it turned out that the walk path was one of the recommended walk paths in Glencoe area and it was beautiful. We passed a small forest with a small river (and the water was green). The distance is about 2 miles and for sure we could not make it for 20 minutes :-P But it was indeed our fave walk during this trip. It made me want to go back to Glencoe again in summer (and try other walking route) :-)