Moray Park Inverness

... ski resort... and this was the A93, the highest public road in the UK... closed to snow for much of the winter... unsurprising!





Beautiful, beautiful drive. It took hours and hours but I didn't care... I need to find more excuses to go to the Highlands :P

Today I headed of to Loch Einlich with Jade from the hostel. She was over from Canada and had asked if she could come along with me. I had first planned to go off on my bike but as it was fairly expensive to hire a bike we decided to go off on foot.

We walked down to the Loch and then up one of the footpaths up the side of the mountain to get a better view of the loch and also some more pictures. We started the final part ...

Today was a bit of a washout, in two ways actually. First, I didn't get to bed until 05:45 as I was up in the bar drinking until very late (or early, you could say). Secondly, I was woken up to a wet foot as water was pouring through the ceiling through the smoke detector and onto the end of my bed. I quickly got dressed and went down to reception and they found that someone upstairs had left a tap running and the plug in...whoops!

Aviemore, Scotland, United Kingdom peterward

Today I left SYHA Torridon (with the key I must add) and headed off to Fort Augustus via Inverness, again stopping along the way to take some photos.

I must say, it was nice to stop in Inverness and actually see some people around. I had a walk around the shops, filled the car up with diesel and went shopping in Morisons.

On my way to ...

... my packed lunch that Helena has made for me.
Cheers Sis!
I
make it all the way to Carlisle before stopping at Tescos for break and
some food, straight to the hot food counter for some hot chicken legs,
mmm! That will keep me going for a bit! I keep going and head to
Culrain where my next hostel is ...

... It was a tiny pin on the horizon. Further South, we drove through Dundee and on to St Andrews to visit the cathedral and the castle. We walked along the waterfront between the two, and through the old churchyard of the cathedral. St Andrews Cathedral would have been impressive when it was complete, but I liked it as a ruin. It had a faded grandeur that made it more interesting than your average church. Heading inland towards Stirling, we ...

... airways engineers to change two screws? 2 and 1/2 hours. While we waited on board at Heathrow airport for the flight to Edinburgh. My claim to fame, shared a plane with the Dutchess of York or the Redheaded royal. Arrived in Inverness aboard the smallest British airways plane ever only 6 people on board and 3 of them were cabin crew. Bloody buggered with jetlag and only 3 hours of sleep.

... was a very extravagent and beautiful place. Later that day we watched a sheep dog demonstration in the Grampian Mountains,. The dogs were very fun to watch. We ended the day at Laggin Country Inn, an hunting lodge turned into a homey B&B. Grandma enjoyed some Haggis at dinnertime, but I decided to pass.

Before leaving Skye we decided to hike out to its' southernmost point, the Point of Sleet. The drive to get there was lovely, but the road was very narrow and resembled a roller coaster ride. However, that was not the end of it, once at the end of the road, one has to hike four miles over moorland to get to the actual point. However, it was another sunny day and wed did not have to be in Invernness until 5 ...

... 8211; we’d surely have died of exposure.

Through Dundee and Perth we then turned northwards and threaded between the Monadhliath and Cairngrom mountains. We kept an eye on the car’s outside temperature gauge with great interest as it dipped below 20 degrees Fahrenheit, eventually bottoming out at 13 degrees. At -10.5 degrees Celsius this was easily the lowest temperatures either Ali or I had faced, and we so quickly pulled ...