Fort William is also one of the endpoints of the 96-mile hiking trail called the West Highland Way that winds through the hills and mountains and along the lochs all the way to just north of Glasgow. You can break it up into different sections, but the scenery for this stretch is absolutely amazing, and if I return to Scotland doing this hike (or at least part of it) is right at the top of my list now (well, that and visiting the Isle of Skye).
Because we were running ahead of schedule a bit, our driver was kind enough to pull over at some particularily gorgeous spots and let us stretch our legs and take some pictures. The harshest and probably most beautiful landscape was in the mountains of Glencoe (which came with another story and sad folk song about the Campbell clan massacring the MacDonald clan).
Despite the occasional intense shower or bit off hail as we drove through low clouds the weather was gorgeous for the most part, and according to our driver having things as clear as they were instead of all foggy is quite rare.
For the last leg of the trip we drove for a long time along the shore of Loch Lomond, which is the largest loch in Scotland. Since it's so close to Glasgow it's apparently a popular weekend and summer retreat for locals, and his information on it included everything from the fishing laws to a permanent nudist colony on one of the islands in the loch (it apparently has an average age of 62).
Well that's a brief summary of things. I'll put the rest of my pictures online in a day or two. They take quite awhile to upload, and since I need to get up in 3 hours I'm going to leave it for now and try to get a couple hours of sleep at least.
5 comments:
Wow, what amazing hills and scenery! Looks like a great excursion. What a lucky break to get such an entertaining bus driver! I'm definitely adding Scotland as a destination on my bucket list.
Beautiful pictures! I'm glad you enjoyed the highlands so much and that you had a such a great driver (I remember when I was in Scotland, we kept making our driver do Fat Bastard impressions). It would have been perfect if you had had a chance to do some climbing, but I know you'll get lots of chances in your travels.
Oh my gosh, that's absolutely beautiful. I have travel envy! And I'm also ridiculously excited about the highland cow pic.
The highland cow (or hairy coo, as the locals call them) pic was quite annoying to get actually. I'd seen a few of the cows out in the fields, but only from a moving bus and could never get a good shot of them. At one of the towns we went to I noticed a farm just outside the town that had a few, and so when to bus stopped for a quick break I ran out of town to get to this farm just so I could take some pictures of their cows. Meanwhile I'm sure the others were sitting in a cafe somewhere enjoying their teas and pastries.
Beauty landscape.
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