Scotland Adventure: The Highlands Extended

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So upon reading my last post I realized that I got off track and was writing more about my love for Scotland than my actual trip there. I will try and stay on task this time.

So our Highland road trip took us through Inverness and to Fort Augustus, where our hotel was located. But more on that later. The drive to the hotel was at least three and a half hours, so we made a couple stops along the way. Our first stop was at Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness. The castle itself was awesome; mostly in shambles as it had been blown up in 1692 to prevent it from being used by the Jacobite army. However despite the castle's rich history and beauty, the real eye-catcher was the view of Loch Ness. It was an unusually sunny day in Scotland when we visited, and the lake was sparkling. It actually reminded me a lot of the lakes we have back home in Canada. My aunt and I took about a million pictures (and threw in a couple snapchat videos of course), and then moved along to our next destination.

So back to the hotel; we weren't actually staying in a hotel, we were staying in what used to be an Monastery. It is now referred to as Fort Augustus Abbey, or properly, St. Benedict's Abbey. The Abbey was built in 1876, and was just a monastery for a while before eventually becoming a boarding school. The school was shut down in 1993 however, after numerous allegations of sexual and physical abuse of the pupils by the monks teaching there. Since then it has been remodelled, turning the school into many apartments that have been sold or are rented out as hotel rooms, which is what we stayed in throughout the duration of our visit. It was our home base; perfectly situated in the middle of all the different places in the Highlands that I wished to see in the next 3 days to come.

Day one in the Highlands was more or less what I described in this, and my previous entry; lots of driving, with beautiful views and a few castles along the way. Day 2 was a tad more exciting, as we drove up to the Isle of Skye, which happened to be at the top of my Scotland Bucket List. I had read that it is the most beautiful place in Scotland, and those people were not wrong. Up until going to the Isle of Skye, I had believed that Scotland could not possible get more beautiful, but I was quickly proven wrong.

The drive to Isle of Skye from Fort Augustus took about two and a half hours, including one stop at Eilean Donan Castle. It's a pretty famous Scottish castle, and has been featured in many movies (Like Made of Honour). Suffice to say, it was pretty cool to stop and see it. We didn't bother going in since it was so packed with tourists, so we admired it from afar and took a bunch of photos. After that we hopped back in the Land Rover and continued our journey. The view along the way consisted of plenty of rolling green hills, and thousands of sheep. Did you know that there are more sheep than people in Scotland? That is an actual fact too.

After driving for hours and crossing a pretty large bridge to get on the island, we finally reached our destination; Dunvegan Castle. It took us so long to get there because Dunvegan happens to be on the far end of the island. But I got a great tour of the island along the way since we drove across it. It truly is the most beautiful place in Scotland, and maybe even the most beautiful place in the world. My head was whipping around in every direction as I tried to take it all in. I wanted to see and remember everything, because you do not see something like that everyday. The country there was even more lush than the rest of the highlands; an almost shocking shade of green. And the ocean was beautiful. I was totally in love. It is too bad that we didn't end up going to see the Fairy Pools, as I had read up on them and they seemed gorgeous, but we just didn't have the time. I guess I will just have to go next time!

More about Dunvegan Castle; It was built in the 1500s I believe, and has since been restored numerous times to keep it in tiptop shape. However some original parts of the castle do remain, but they are behind a glass wall so as to keep tourists from touching them and preventing proper preservation. So anyway, we walked around the Castle on a self-guided tour, until the sound of bagpipes lured us outside. Turns out that a group of young men from the Melbourne University were there to play for everyone, which was pretty cool to witness. After watching for a bit we strolled down to the water and took a small boat out on the Loch to see some seals. They were adorable, and we watched them for a while and boated around before finally heading back to land to get some food.

On our way back home we took a detour to Portree, the most well known little town in Isle of Skye. It was an adorable little fishing town with colourful houses lining the harbour. Trisha and I realized we were absolutely famished, and so we went to The Chippy for some chips and gravy. Burned my whole mouth on that gravy but it was totally worth it. Especially because we were both still hungover from going to the pub the night before, and so all that greasy food was well needed.

After eating and strolling around a bit, we got back in the car and returned to Fort Augustus to relax for the night. Seeing as Fort Augustus is such a small town and only had one nice pub, we didn't feel like going back a second night in a row. So instead we went to the local restaurant and got burgers and fries and pie for takeout, and returned to the apartment to watch shitty British tv (sorry to my British readers but you know it's true), drink champagne, and stuff our faces with food. Then we passed out, exhausted from our busy day of driving and touring, and got some rest for our last day in the Highlands.

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