Lochs and Highlands

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Geo: 57.1431, -4.68296

After a hot Scottish breakfast, we were in the car, departing Pitlochry to the north around 9am.
It wasn't the crisp blue skies of yesterday, but still temperate dry conditions. Today would be all about the natural beauty of Scotland. We reached our most northerly point in Scotland at Inverness, and then began a drive along the Great Glen in a Southwesterly direction. The Great Glen starts at Inverness and basically connects a series of lakes, or 'Lochs'. The first of these Lochs was the most famous, Loch Ness. You know why its famous. One of the worlds most famous mythological creatures lives here, the Loch Ness monster. There have been countless blurry videos, photos, apparent sightings and vague descriptions of a giant 'Pelesiosaur' type creature living in the loch. Our mission, to find it, and ideally capture it, maybe even eat it. We spent countless minutes tracking the beast from a couple of vantage points, the most scenic of which overlooked the ruins of Urquhart Castle. Driving around the lake I remained vigilant, keeping my eyes focused between the trees at every splash, whitecap or ripple. After several likely sightings, Nat purchased a mini monster from a gift shop and we headed onwards towards Fort Augustus.
Fort Augustus offered a beautiful viewing point of Loch Ness as well an interesting gate system joining the lochs through a canal. From here we passed through Fort William and the base of the Ben Nevis range towards the Glencoe Highlands. We stopped briefly into the Glencoe visitors centre, which was small but offered some information on the history and geology of the area. The most famous and interesting story being the Glencoe massacre of the McDonald tribe back in the 1600s.
A short drive later and we emerged in the heart of the glorious and inspiring Glencoe Highlands. Having passed through here before, I had concerns this area wouldn't live up to expectations. Thankfully this was not to be the case. The towering rock faces rising up each side of the road had lost none of their splendor. An improvement from my last visit was the countless whitecaps and snow patches scattered about. Alas, with time growing late our circumstances did not allow me to indulge my adventurous senses and explore the area. A short stroll would have to suffice and soon we were on our way. We arrived at our accommodation in the outskirts of Sterling around 8. The Holiday Inn Express here was impressive and our nicest to date by some margin. Dinner was at a next door restaurant, and a delicious discount 3 course meal and wine left us crawling back to our rooms around 10pm.

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Photos

Joe pesters a peacock
He pestered it good. Kept wiggling its plumage in an attempt to seduce him. It was successful.

Joe at Dalwhinnie Distillery
We enjoyed an excellent guided tour.

Urquhart Castle
On the bank of Loch Ness

The star of the show
I think he was on the payroll of Fort Augustus. Watching the boats in itself wasnt that thrilling, everyone was talking about the swan that always demanded being first through each gate.

Along side canal
Heading out to Loch ness