Highland Ho!

This past weekend Alette and I ventured to the Highlands care of Timberbush Tours. Originally we had planned a trip to London to visit Cordelia and family, but due to not booking far enough in advance, our train tickets on National Express jumped from £80 to £250. Already having a dog sitter lined up, we went to Plan B.

Our Highland tour was of Eilean Donan, Loch Ness & The North West Highlands and was from Saturday morning till Sunday evening. We spent Friday evening in Glasgow where we had dinner at the Grassroots Cafe with friends Rona and Phil, and stayed at The Belgrave Hotel. Unfortunately, the location was a little noisy, and our room had a wonky toilet that decided to malfunction at 2:30am. But who needs sleep when you're on vacation, right?

The tour was a great opportunity for us to get a taste of other parts of Scotland. On Saturday we drove the scenic route from Glasgow to Fort William, passing through the conservation village of Luss on the shores of Loch Lomond, the incredibly desolate Rannoch Moor, and the tragic Glen Coe, site of a massacre on February 13th 1692. We drove past the site where Hagrid's cottage was built for filming the last two Harry Potter movies. Sadly it's since been demolished. We also saw the memorial to James Stewart who was infamously hung; an event that inspired Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped.

Fort William felt a bit like Mont Laurier in Quebec, with that uneasy mix of upscale outdoor tourism and resource extraction industries. We had a lovely supper at a nearly empty restaurant on the pedestrian mall downtown: No 4. Timberbush booked our accommodations for us and they were first rate. The comfy beds, thick duvets and profound quiet of the Myrtle Bank Hotel made up for the disapointments of the night before.

On Sunday we went to Eilean Donan and Loch Ness. Eilean Donan Castle is quite nice and looks surprisingly old despite being rebuilt in the early 20th Century. It was one of several occasions of English-bashing on the tour, given that the English blew up the castle a few centuries earlier. For movie buffs, the castle was also used for filming part of The Highlander. For those that haven't heard of Loch Ness, it's apparently the home of a large sea Sasquatch. As is often the case with boat tours, the one we took on the Loch was dull and uneventful. No Nessy sitings.

On the way back to Edinburgh we drove through Cairngorms National Park and past a few distilleries. We made a stop in the too quaint town of Pitlochery. All the shops had closed by this point and there really was very little to do in town. The Indians on our tour took the opportunity to build a wee snow man and engage in a wee snow ball fight. There was snow in the Highlands, did we mention that?

Check out our Picasa photo album of our Highlands trip.