In the land of Nessie: Highlands, Isle of Skye and Loch Ness

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Happy 4th, my fellow Americans! I hope you all had a lovely holiday weekend and enjoyed the wonderful fireworks. I had an absolutely wonderful and amazing weekend, and I am dying to share it with you all. Forewarning: this blog will be a bit lengthy because there is a ton of stuff that I would like to tell you all, so if you don't feel like reading it all then too bad, because you've gotten this far and you are now committed to reading the entire thing! But I'm hoping you'll all enjoy hearing about my adventures as much as I enjoyed having them. On Friday morning, I left for a 3 day tour in the highlands with a group called Heartland Travel. A very nice man named Nory Hope and his wife started this tour business and Nory takes groups of around 15 students into the highlands on a tour that includes the highlands, Isle of Skye and finishes with Loch Ness. It's very enjoyable due to the small number of students, and we all get to know each other over the weekend, and it helps that Nory is absolutely hilarious and one of the nicest guys I've met. He drives the van, and all throughout the tour as we got to different points, he would tell historic stories that related to that place or Scottish myths/fairytales. This trip, Nory was lucky enough to have one of his friends Neil come on the tour with us, and he helped drive the bus and basically was just along for the ride as well. On Friday we left Stirling around 9 and headed in some direction (I haven't really been able to orient myself here as far as directions go), and our first stop was Doune castle which I have already visited. We just got out, took some pictures and got back in. We drove a bit and then stopped in a tiny town called Callendar and got some delicious sandwiches for lunch later that day. After that, there was lots of driving and story telling. As we were driving through the highlands, all of a sudden we saw a guy basically standing in a field on the side of the rode playing bagpipes. It was a really cool thing to see, but I'm still not really sure why he was even there. Either way, I'm glad it was a thing that happened. This was followed by more driving (spoiler alert, this blog includes a lot of driving) and then we stopped for lunch at the foot of the 3 sisters mountains. This obviously reminded me a lot of home, because of our own 3 sisters mountains. Let me just start off this whole thing by saying that the highlands and Isle of Skye are the most beautiful places I've ever seen in my 22 years of being. Everything is absolutely gorgeous and wonderful and I can't put it properly into words. Anyways, after lunch there was more driving. In the highlands, there were a lot of scenes filmed for Harry Potter which was awesome. So we stopped at a place called Glencoe and Nory showed us a place on the side of a hill where Hagrid's hut was placed and filmed in the third movie. All of us Potterheads were quite excited. We then drove up a really sketchy and steep hill to a place where Nory wanted to take us hiking. We hiked for a bit and came into a beautiful meadow called Steall meadow. It was like something straight out of a fairy tale or Lord of the Rings, and absolutely gorgeous. This is where Scotland's second highest waterfall is located which was lovely to see. It made my heart happy that there was still some snow at the peaks of some of the mountains all throughout the highlands. In the meadow, there was a "bridge" across the river that was basically just a long piece of cable strung from one side of the river to the other that swayed really heavily when you walked across it, with two other cables on the side to hold onto. Of course I walked across it. There were many times on this trip, and since I've been in Scotland really, that I've done something and I can hear my mom's voice in my head telling me to be careful or not to do it (or not to get too close to the edge) and my dad and uncles telling me to do it or doing it with me. It's always fun to play out a family scene in my head. Anyways, after the meadow we went to a place called Glenfinnan. Side note: the word "glen" is gaelic for valley, and there are a lot of glens in this blog. Congratulations, you've all just learned a bit of gaelic! So we went to glenfinnan, and this bit was lovely because this is where the Harry Potter train bridge is located. Of course we were all super excited to see it and it was awesome. I played the scenes with the train going across the bridge lots of times in my head. Our final stop for the day was a small castle called Eilean Donan castle. It's situated on its own small loch and it's really quite pretty. This castle is also in the movie Made of Honor with Patrick Dempsey. If you've never seen it, you should watch it just because it has Patrick Dempsey. We then finally arrived at our hostel after a really long day. The weather all day on Friday was absolutely wonderful and sunny and warm, which is not always common in Scotland. One of the ladies at the hostel joked that that might have been their one day of summer. It was so nice out that we decided to have a small BBQ for dinner. The hostel was right on Loch Carron, and it was wonderful. The loch is a sea loch which means that it's connected to the Atlantic ocean. The weather was perfect and wonderful to sit outside by the loch and enjoy some food and everyone's company. I've had a hard time sleeping ever since I arrived in Scotland and I usually don't fall asleep until very very late, however both nights of this trip I think I fell asleep before 10:30 which was wonderful. Saturday was the day that I was most looking forward to. We headed out of our hostel and over to Isle of Skye. I've seen pictures of Skye and it's always been a place that I've loved and wanted to go to but never thought I would get a chance. As I keep saying, it's like the mothership has called me home. Skye only has around 10,000 people on the entire island which is I think around 650 square miles. I wish I could describe exactly how it feels to be there, but the only word that I can come up with is mystical. The main industry sources on the island are tourism and fishing. Nory explained that jobs are scarce on the island because there is no real big central town (just a lot of very small towns and villages), and so everyone that lives there relies on working in some sort of touristy place. It was amazing to see how few people lived there and when we saw houses, it was like they were straight out of a fairy tale. It's interesting because in Stirling, I've seen a lot of road signs and things that have obviously english words on them, but below there are usually some other words that I don't recognize. As we got farther north into the highlands and especially on Skye, those words were everywhere and sometimes were even put before the english words. Nory explained that there are still a lot of people in the highlands and on Skye that speak gaelic, and therefore it is all gaelic words. I've learned that there is gaelic (gay-lic) and gaelic (gah-lic). The first is Irish, the second is Scottish. I didn't know there was a difference, but apparently there is. I'm still not sure what that difference is. I would absolutely love to learn gaelic even though no one would ever know what I was saying or even what language it would be. It would be wonderful. We did so much on Skye that I wish I had time to explain it all. We saw the Cullin mountains, the old man of Storr (it's a rock formation, not an actual old man), kilt rock, and Cuith-Raing (no idea what that means). It was all so beautiful even though it was raining and very cold a good majority of the day. My absolute favorite part of the day was next, when we went to Faerie glen. I wish I could find a way to describe this wonderful place. Folklore is a very important part of Scottish history, and I think even more so in the north. So many people believe that this is where the entrance to the fairy kingdom is. There is no other place in the world like it. One minute you're driving through the highlands, all of a sudden there's a huge space with big grassy knolls all around and bizarre formations. And then all of a sudden it's gone again. It was a truly magical place. Our last stop for the day was the fairy pools. They weren't as exciting as I thought they would be and especially since it was raining. They were still lovely to look at and it was a nice walk with a pretty view of the highland mountains covered in mist. We returned to our hostel (most of us soaking wet) and had dinner and whatnot, and once again fell asleep early. Today, we woke up and went out onto loch carron with a man named Neil (or neil the fisherman as Nory called him) on his boat, and went fishing for scallops. Well, really we all just stood as he worked all of the machines and nets to catch the scallops. We caught basically everything but scallops, and Neil said that it was the first time that he had caught so few. The things that we did pull up were rather cool, like soft coral and star fish. We even managed to catch a jellyfish, which I held and it was slimy and weird and felt like holding pudding. We did catch a few scallops, which he simply opened and cut out of the shell and let us eat them. They were quite tasty, just salty. Talk about fresh. After leaving the hostel we drove (I promise the driving is almost over) to a place where we got to see and feed some highland cows, or as people here call them, highland coos. They are adorable and fluffy. After the coos we made our final stop of the weekend which was loch ness (dun dun dunnnn). No, we didn't see Nessie. Boo. But we did have excellent fish and chips so I'll mark that as a win. I'm quite upset with myself because I didn't really bring attire on the tour with me that I could get wet, and some people in our group decided to jump into loch ness just to say that they did it. Had I brought the proper clothing, I also would have jumped. Just means I'll have to go back again! That more or less sums up my weekend in the best way that I can describe it (which means that I'm almost done writing for those of you who got bored after the first sentence). This weekend was so incredible and I'm so blessed that I was able to do this tour. I saw some of the most beautiful things that I've ever seen, and I will always cherish this trip. It was totally worth missing the 4th of July. I hope that everyone had a wonderful weekend, cheers to a brand new week ahead!

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