What would you do without FREEEEDOM!

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Hey all,
just got back from the Haggis tour of Scotland and...............wow! The tour started on Monday the 1st of September where everyone going on the tour met up at the departure point in Edinburgh. Everyone was nicely covered up in warm clothes for it was quite cold and we all made our introduction to each other. Then we met our tour guide Mat who was a really nice guy and he took us to out bus and did a roll call.
From there he gave us a brief list of the things we would be doing and then we were on our way. First stop we made was to do some exploring along Loch Ness where we were supposed to get a glimps of Nessy but for some reason she would not show her face. It does not matter though for the scenery was just beautiful.
We saw a few other Lochs along the way and headed for Perthshire through Dunkeld which concluded day one of our tour.
Day two we headed for for the great Battlefield of Culloden which was pretty much just a giant marsh and was said to be in the same condition or at least near enough to it as it was when the battle took place, so we were able to see how hard it would of been for them to fight for there were prickle bushes pot holes rocks and not to mention the cold to contend with. Our tour guide was telling us that when the battle took place one side was apsolutely slaughtered because when they were charging in half of them were struggeling to get through the mud while the other half had fairly steady ground so they lost half there army charging in which ment easy kill for the oposition. After there we headed for the Great Glen for lunch and chilled out for a while before heading to the hostel which turned out to be this Huge old castle in the Highlands.

Day three we were heading for the Isle of Skye where we were taken to explore a castle in the middle of a Loch, we took a quick tour through the castle and were able to see how they lived back then and how it was built to defend themselves from the enemy, it was however unfortunate that when a battle took place there, some cheeky fellow found his way in and into the gun powder room where he set a fuse and blew the whole thing sky high. So what we saw there was actually re-builded as best as they could to what the former castle looked like.
Most of the next day was traveling through the highlands and just taking in the scenery, we did however go to where a scene from harry potter was filmed which was just a bridge but at least i can say i was there.
That night we stayed at a hostel that had a pub where all the locals go for a beer and relax, this night however was different for them........they had aussies there to keep them entertained. They had a live band playing there that night which were three men playing the violin, the guitar and the flute. We were able to experience some good Irish music while we were having a few beers and next thing two of the guys on our tour started doing a very poor effort at break dancing but it got the locals laughing and so next thing we were all up there linking arms and dancing in circles and once the tables were cleared we got up on them and up and along them getting the whole pub clapping and cheering. Just an amazing night!

The last day of our tour we headed for William Wallaces Memorial castle for the battle at Stirling. Unfortunately due to lack of time we did not get to go up into the castle which was more of a tease then anything but we did at least get to see it and the view from the top of the mountain and our tour guide was playing scenes from Braveheart on the bus where Mel Gibson was giving his speech to the army so we all got goosebumps from just getting into the feel of our surroundings.
Any way guys i better head off, got to catch a plane to Barcelona now but will fill you in on what happens there when i get time, until then take care.

Brettxoxo.

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