Loch Ness, Glencoe, & The Highlands

Spot the bird?

Yesterday started bright and early with a 6:30 am wake-up call - we needed to be at the bus meeting point by 7:45, a point that was about 30 min walk away from my flat. Still not really awake, we wandered up to the meeting point (right up by Edinburgh Castle) where we were greeted by Timberbush Tours and divided into two buses.

We did the one-day trip to Loch Ness, Glencoe, and the Highlands, leaving Edinburgh at 8am and returning around 8pm that night. As we were covering a large amount of ground in a very short amount of time, none of our stops were very long, but our driver, Jamie, was extremely entertaining, and kept up a commentary of interesting historical information for much of the trip.

Our first stop was at a small tourist trap just before we started getting into the Scottish "mountains", where we got to see some adorable Highland Cows. While the majority of highland cows used to be black, they are now more commonly tan, with black highland cows being a rare sight. The three at this particular place were called Hamish, Heather, and their daughter Honey. Hamish has a facebook page.

It was also a loop, heading up on the back roads and back down on the main ones, so there was little repeats in terms of the view outside of the bus.

If you want an idea of where we went, this map is roughly the main stops on our trip, though I don't know if it is the exact route we took.

However, this does mean that a lot of the pictures I took were through a bus window, so apologies for any drop in my usual wonderful quality of pictures.

Some fun Scottish terminology before we begin: a glen is a valley, 'ben' means mountain, and a loch is a lake.

While the human population of Scotland is 5 million, the population of sheep is about 10 million.

After this, we headed up into the Highlands, hearing more about the Scottish wars of independence, including how historically inaccurate Braveheart, based on the real-life Sir William Wallace, actually was.

We passed through the valley where the Mackay clan traditionally resided (though we didn't happen to stop there).

We also heard about Robert the Bruce. Fun fact: before he was King of the independent Scotland, Robert the Bruce stabbed  John III "Red" Comyn to death on the alter of an abby, for which crime he asked, after his death, that his heart be cut from his chest and carried to the Holy Land by his friend Sir James Douglas. However, Douglas was mortally wounded before he reached the Holy Land. Certain accounts hold that as he was dying, he threw Robert's heart out before him, saying "Go forth my braveheart", so thats where the movie title came from.

Robert the Bruce decisively secured Scottish independence in the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. Significantly, while Scottish independence was won militarily in 1314, Scottish independence will be voted on through referendum by the Scottish people in 2014.

We passed Stirling Castle, where Mary, Queen of Scots was crowned at one year old. She is considered Scotland's most tragic queen.

We passed the castle where Monty Python's Holy Grail was filmed, but too fast for me to get a picture.

We travelled through the Great Glen, which is a natural fault running across Scotland, containing several glens and lochs, running from Inverness to Fort William.

We travelled through where one of the glens where Skyfall was shot, at which point our bus driver played the Skyfall song.

Its really funny, our guide kept pointing out, oh, this is where scenes from Harry Potter/Game of Thrones/Monty Python/etc was shot. In particular, we passed where the scenes for Hagrid's cottage were shot in the third Harry Potter film. While they intended to leave the cottage up, they ended up having to take it down because people kept stealing bits of it - ask our guide, he has the front door to Hagrid's cottage in his house.

We also passed through Glencoe, where we heard about the massacre of the McDonalds by the Campbells. While there were various wars fought in Scotland, much of the killing of Scots was done by their fellow Scots.

Our big stop of the day was at Loch Ness, where I went on an hour-long boat trip around the Loch, passing by Urquhart Castle.

Caty, me, and Tori with Nessie

We stopped at the Commando Memorial, erected in the Scottish highlands where they train, memorializing the men who fought in WWII.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, Highland farmers were forced out by wealthy Scottish landowners who believed they could make more money hosting animals on their land instead of tenant farmers in the Highland Clearance. Memorials to this exist in both Scotland and Canada. Our guide told us that while the population of Scotland is 5 million, there is an estimated 25 million people of Scottish descent around the world, a large number of that due to the clearances.

There are so many friggin castles in Scotland. We passed at least eight that I can remember, probably more. Much of them are only ruins though - a lot of them were blown up or set fire to over the course of various wars with the English.

Bridge in Inverness

Overall, an awesome and very informative day.

Put my scarf over my head because it was wet and the wind would just blow my hood off... belatedly realized it made me look like a little old lady.