Katie the Highlander!?

Yes I recently discovered Highlanding is maybe not in my blood...The genetics are just not there. My legs are too short!! Not adaptable for those steep climbs, and also if i ever tried to wear a kilt, it would drag on the floor and get all muddy.

Despite my shortcomings, i still tackled being a highlander as best i could, luckily the tour i hopped on for 3 days had a bus, and the hiking of the terrain was a one afternoon occasion!

3 days touring the highlands, heading all the way up to the Isle of Skye and back again, never beeing bored for not having anything to see. I've never been so attentive in my life, apart from our tour guide Neil, who for the whole 3 days didn't stop talking to us and telling us what we were seeing, and all the cool folk tales behind the landscapes, there was always some beautiful mountain, field, loch, hairy coo (cow), cliff face, glen, sky, and snow to look at! There wasn't any actual snow near us, just on the top of the mountains.

I also discovered that apart from Perth being in both Scotland and Western Australia, that Perth in Aus must have had a Scott on the infrastructure team, as we had so many names of places the same. Stirling, Kinross, Blairgowie(street thats Cates:)), and there is more but I'll let you look at a map and figure them out yourself!

So the tour!! We left Edinburgh with a bus of about 29 i think, and it was a great bunch of people to be with! We headed to a place called the Hermitage first, a little area that had been constructed to look like a disney forest. It was quite cute and housed the tallest tree in Europe i think or maybe even...the world. We got our first tale of the Faeries here, which are not the cute little tinkerbell like ones, but the ones that try to lure humans into their world and capture them..ok so Neil the tour guide is a much better story teller, and i believed him!

We carried on to pitlorchry to grab some lunch and stopped at Killecrankie for lunch. It was here the ever informative Neil told us about the Scotts in a famous battle here, and the many uses of a kilt. One of them being a scare tactic, turns out having a battle ready Highlander charging down a hill at full belt isn't scary enough, so the addition of the kilt flailing up the air, showing what a real man he was scared the shit out of the English! And the traditional kilts were like 20metres long an wrapped around and around for super warmth and then the rest wrapped over shoulder, and head to become extremely camouflaged into the surroundings. Ai so not just to show off the Scottish boys sexy legs, and air the jewels.

Anyway, we carried on to Culloden Field a famous (despite me not knowing but thats really not an indicator) battle took place here between the Jacovites and the English. Basically over a thousand Jacovites were killed in under 15 minutes. Pretty insane, and the front lines of the 2 sides are marked by flags, with many mound burials with the names of the Clans over them. The tour was like a history lesson, but i was interested because unlike school it wasn't about just Ned Kelly and the very young history of Australia. This country has had people living here since the Bronze ages, the vikings roamed here too.

After the sobering war field we headed to a a place I think everyone knows about (even me) Loch Ness. And although there were no sightings of Nessie the local inhabitant of the Loch it was pretty amazing to see, and, hear the actual history behind the tale. Apparently honeymooners have been the ones to see her, so anyone planning on getting hitched don't come here for the honeymoon cos your new husband will be eaten...actually most people are worth more dead than alive... I'm Kidding!! (Kind of)

We had nearly finished our bus travels for the day, stopping at one more place before the hostel, the Eilaen Donan Castle. Highlander the movie was shot here and apparently every whisky add ever, and even when we went by one was being shot! it's really impressive, standing at the connection of 3 lochs.

Just around the corner was our stop for the night, Kyleakin (Ky-larkin in aussie). We had the whole hostel to ourselves which was cool, and we popped over to the local pub (one of 2) and unluckily missed the speed dating sign up for the small, small....small town by a few minutes. We had a great night though, before retiring exhausted.

Saturday started with a first for me. Wellie wearing as a serious thing. Or gum boots as a lot of people know them. A few of us got some handpainted ones and we were the coolest kids on the tour! The first stop was Sligachan River where a tale of an Irish man called Cuchaillien came to fight the woman Sciath... he lost, they fell in love, and it was beautiful. The river that they fought around was thought to be a river of youth and you had to sink the body part in for 7 seconds to rejuvinate it. We all ducked our faces in and it was quite refreshing, but no miracles unfortunately, but really where could i go from where i am?

My discovering my lack of highland ability came at our next stop, Man of Storr. Now don't think i hated it or didn't enjoy it, i loved it, but it just pointed out to me I'm not built for mountain hiking..maybe it was the bag of doritos i had...(or the many i have had) but who can say no to cheezy goodness...I digress!!

There was a pretty heavy mist over the mountain/hill when we set off so i could never actually see further than about 15 metres in front of me. And it is this that enabled me to get all the way to the top, cos if i had seen it all starting it would have been a bit daunting. By the time we got to the top, the fog was starting to clear and it was amazing. We ate lunch at high altitudes then trekked back down!

A girl on the tour manged to get lost at the one AND ONLY fork in the road, she has been one of the most oddest people i have met so far. She liked to burst out into untrained opera which was a novelty. The first time. Every stop we made she decided we wanted to hear her, and we did, there was no escape. Anyway she got lost and called the police who called the mountain rescue who called the tour company, who called our guide. Anyway long story short she was found and our stressed out guide gave us a bottle of whisky to share to celbrate him not being fired for having the mountain rescue helicopter come out, or even one of his tourists die.

We headed back not long after that stopping at a couple of places. We all chipped in for dinner and had it together at the hostel which was kinda cool, like having your own little crew again.

The last day we saw again amazing sights, the 5 sisters, Ben Nevis (the tallest peak in the UK) where the soldiers trained for war in Europe. We stopped at glen coe for dinner which was amazing view wise but the history again was incredible. Clan wars etc. We got to pass the castle where the Monty Python Holy grail was filmed, right before we came across Hamish the Hairy Coo! He just chills in his paddock, and it's one of those situations where i think the star is not getting his money's worth out of all the souviners people sell of him! He was quite cute though!

The last stop before arriving in Edinburgh again was the William Wallace monument. It was here we were told the real story of William Wallace which was a lot more complicated than the Braveheart movie about him. Although i still do like the movie, i get the feeling the Scotts are a bit annoyed about it because a recent statue that was unveiled at the base of the monument resembled Mel Gibson somewhat and dissappeared very quickly!

Back in Edinburgh and likei said earlier we all had dinner together which was fun, bit of pub grub!

I don't know if I've ever had so much fun in 3 days with 29 strangers, and also never learnt quite so much history in 3 days!! So far best time on my trip and it'll be hard to shift it from my memory.
xx

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