Coast to Coast...........Glencoe to Montrose

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We have thoroughly enjoyed our few days in the Highlands even if our last night has been spent in the second most uncomfortable bed we have endured on the BBA V2 at the Glencoe Youth Hostel. Surely the Youth Hostel organisation must be making enough money at GBP46 twin to replace the hard mattresses in their Glencoe establishment. We shall make that suggestion in our review anyway!

Before we left the area we checked out the North Balachulish church over the bridge from Glencoe for Gretchen’s lost rellies grave but without any success. And as one last chance we also took the road that runs beside Loch Leven the 12km up to the top of the loch at Kinlochleven just in case there was another cemetery that might reveal their final place of rest. And while we did find another cemetery it was not old enough to contain the graves of anyone prior to the late 1800’s and we were looking for the mid 1850’s onwards.

Rather than return via the Glencoe pass towards the east coast we took the road down the side of Loch Linnhe and called in at Oban for lunch.

On the way we followed another lead Gretchen had of other ancestors buried in a ‘lost’ cemetery on the edge of the loch but couldn’t locate them either although we did find a cemetery nearby that had some graves from the mid 1800’s.

Oban is located just off the A85 and was a busy town with ferries to and from the inner and outer islands coming and going in the couple of hours we were there with many passengers on or off the ferries taking time in the town.

We found a small pub back from the seafront and got a great deal of a meal for a fiver, haddock and chips with peas. We were tempted with a beer but we had a good distance to drive to Montrose through the afternoon so settled for an orange juice each instead.

Oban is a town that looks like it must have been a boisterous place in its heyday as a fishing port although today the fishing boats have been replaced by the ferries with three terminals that we could see.

Back on the A85 our route to Montrose on the east coast north of Dundee would be almost directly across the country. After passing Loch Earn we left the real hills behind and we guessed that that was the end of the Highlands for us for now as the land flattened out to more rolling pasture and fields.

Our journey took us around Perth and onto the A90 towards Dundee passing the directional sign to the hamlet of Benvie just short of Dundee. Our thoughts went back to how daughter Erin and husband Brent who had stayed on the opposite of the 4 lane highway in Longforgan had got themselves across the road in the snow when they visited the area at New Year several years ago. Presumably the road was a lot quieter then than what we experienced today.

The outside temperature had warmed up since we had left the Highlands this morning and the thermometer on the car was registering 15C.

Like Vicky in the Citroen, Serena in the Toyota has taken us on some odd roads just when you don’t expect it and this afternoon after we cleared Dundee and had carried on up the A90 she suddenly gave instructions to turn right across the other two lanes of the highway to head towards Forfar and then onto Montrose.

Strangely we have come across these types of turns across highway traffic before and under normal circumstances we would avoid trying to turn across traffic speeding towards us at 100kph.However the opposing traffic wasn’t now as heavy as it was around Dundee and so we lined up behind another car doing the same turn and with a decent gap booted it onto the A932.

We passed through Forfar and onto the A934 and before long we were in sight of my cousin’s home on the outskirts of Montrose. She has a great location with expansive views over the Montrose lagoon with all sorts of nature at her doorstep.

After a catch up over a glass or two of wine it was time for dinner and she had invited her other two sisters, Dawn and Viv (also cousins of course) and Niall’s (he was away on a work assignment) new wife, Catherine and daughter as well as Niall’s kids Eliot and Iona and Dawn’s hubby Iain for a reunion dinner. We had a great time catching up on 4 years ago when we did the same type of dinner and the hours quickly sped by before it was time to call it a night.

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