Weekend in Scotland

As many things happened, and would be too long to tell everything in one post, I will create a post for each day we spent there.

Starting with...

Saturday:

In the morning we woke up early and packed everything in the car, which was fully tanked by that time, and hit the road at around 08:30 in the morning. We decided to go to our booked accomodation, but on the way we have stopped at some very nice places, I have already checked on the internet.

The first 350 km was incredible boring, motorway all the way up to Glasgow. The Lake District area was nice with its own "mountains", but apart from that, it was pretty boring. The weather however was quite good, at the beginning it was kinda cloudy then it became sunny. We did not bother to stop at Glasgow, as all the people I talked to told me not to stop there as there is nothing really interested in the city. So we just drove across then headed up north.

The first target was the Balloch Castle ,which was located south from Loch Lommond. I will not bother to tell its history, click on the link and read if you are interested. The Castle itself was nice, located in a very nice park, which overlooked the lake. We spent some time to look around, then continued our journey. 

We drove north along the coast of Loch Lommond, saw wonderful view of the lake and the mountains. The roads were narrow but in good condition, however sometimes the view made it difficult to concentrate on driving.

The Next stop for us was the place, Glen Croe: Rest and be Thankful, at the intersection of A83, and B828 roads. This was probably the most amazing view of a glen I have seen in my whole life. The deepness and the ammount of space was incredible feeling to absorb. Whereever you looked was something marvellous. We walked around, made many photographs, talked to a Belgian-Scottman :-), then jumped in the car and continued our trip. I can highly recommend it to see for everyone, as the view was really beautiful.

Leaving the Argyll Forest Park the road has led us along the shore of Loch Fyne until the city, Inveraray where we have seen another castle, (Inveraray Castle). The castle itself had some kind of greenish colour, and a nice view over the lake. We walked around it, but as did not want to go inside, we continued our journey.

Later on we have passed a huge field, which had some Highland Cows, so I stopped for a moment in order to see these wonderful animals. I really loved them, however they acted kinda scary, so didn't dare touching them through the wooden fence. They are icons of Scotland, that is why it was great to see them there. We spent only some minutes at them, then off we went.

25km north from Inveraray there was our next destination, Kilchurn Castle, in Dalmally.

The castle was amazing, but very hard to find the way to get to it. I had to ask some locals who were nice to help us out and gave directions. A footpath was leading to it, through a field, bushes, crossing railway tracks, surrounded by sheeps, passing by some people camping there in tents. But there was something romantic and ancient about the whole area. It was open, so we could go inside, climb up and have a look around. The weather was about to rain, everything was in mist, but it was marvellous.

It was in the late afternoon that time, so after we took many pictures and looked around we decided to continue and find our accomodation. Our place was at North-Connel, which was about 35km from Dalmally, so we got there soon. And the suprise came, when we got the keys, from the landlady. The double room as advertised itself was a whole 1 bedrom apartment :-)

With a fully equipped kitchen/living room/dining table/sofas, shower, TV (SKY), DVD, VCR, french door to a huge green garden. This all for 50 quid for a night. Bargain. The whole place was spotless, with great furniture, and very relaxing area, just at the Loch Etive.

After packing out our clothes, luggages, we went into the town Connel for a dinner. The dinner was wonderful also. It started to rain unfortunately, however after dinner, getting back to our place we went for a short walk at the lake.

It was an incredible day. Mrs. Smith was touched and became emotional at "Rest and be Thankful", well, let's say, she was crying :-)

Great day, indeed, however we did not know, sunday will be even better. We were preparing ourself for whalewatching.