Scotland It Is!

This June it was time for another short road trip. Petra flew in to Birmingham on Thursday night and we set off to Scotland the next morning.

Our first stop on the way was York. York is a lovely little town with a nice old centre. There were so many cute shops all around, which we just couldn’t resist, so we ended up buying ourselves a cool souvenir-Jack Daniel’s vests. I don’t have any photos, but they really do look pretty awesome. We also tried having a picnic in the park, but ended up running for cover to our car as we were attacked by a flock of young geese.

York

 Geese Invasion

 Welcome to Scotland

Melrose Abbey

 The next stop was Edinburgh, which definitely did live up to our expectations both in terms of the nice architecture as well as the number and variety of shops. And yes, we did some shopping AGAIN. Who can resist Primark anyway?

 Adam Smith, the father of modern economics

 The weather looked pretty grim to start with, but it turned out to be much better than we expected and we got quite a bit of sunshine. It did tend to start raining whenever we were trying to find a place to camp, but that didn’t bother us too much-I think we must have broken all the records in terms of speed/agility of pitching the tent/getting the car ready for sleeping.

After Edinburgh we visited Cairngorms national park, where we camped next to one of the lakes. Surprisingly the midges issue wasn’t that bad at all, and we though that everyone who was warning us about them was exaggerating a bit. WRONG! When camping a few days later we literally go eaten alive. It is impossible to do anything when the midges are out. As soon as you stop they are all over you and you can imagine the joy of pitching up a tent in these sort of conditions.

Cairngorms

After Cairngorms we drove up to Loch Ness to see Nessie, but all we saw were a couple of pheasants and a rabbit. Initially we weren’t planning on going further north, but because we were ahead of our planned itinerary we decided to explore the NW Scottish coast. The NW is in our opinion the most stunning part of Scotland. With its mountain passes, bays and grasslands it is very similar to Norwegian SW, which we explored a few years ago, and is very,very picturesque.

 Loch Ness

The NW Highlands

When driving to the Isle of Skye, we mentally prepared ourselves for its infamously bad weather. What we got instead was clear sky and sunshine. We decided to do a short trek up to the Skye’s most famous sight-the Old Man of Storr. The sun was on the wrong side, so the pictures are not great, but oh well, I guess you can’t have everything.

Isle of Skye-Portree

The Old Man of Storr

The Cullin Ridge

 Eilean Donan Castle

Our last stop before driving back to England was Glasgow, where surprisingly, we did not do any shopping.

 Classy Glasgow

We ended our trip with a celebratory dinner in Cosmo's in Coventry. Sooo good!

Scotland is such a nice destination to visit and I would recommend it to everyone, who likes nature. It is ideal if you can visit it by car, because the coach/train can’t take you to all those hidden bays and mountain passes which make it so special.