The good version of Wednesday around Scotland!

Finally, here is the fully detailed version of my blog detailing my travels around Scotland this past Wednesday. Some of it is copied from the brief one I made just to save time but as you can probably just look at the size there is a lot more in this one!

It started out when Anthony & Thomas (two french guys who were in my room and the guys I hung out with most of my time in Scotland) told me they were going on this trip on when we met on Tuesday morning. After booking my ticket at the Glasgow tourism center, everything was set for me to go along as well. So, we made plans to get up early in the morning to catch the bus for our tour of the Highlands and Loch Ness, which was scheduled to leave at 8:20 am. (I hate having to be up that early!) We got up around 6:30 because we figured by the time we got ready to go and if we left the hostel around 7:15 we would have plenty of time. We had to be there about 15 minutes early as well as Anthony had to exchange his money. We also decided it would be cheaper for us to buy sandwiches and pack a lunch, so we planned time to shop for this as well - not to mention the walk to get there. We got there around 8 am and waited for our bus. We started to get worried when it hit 8:20 and there was no sign of a bus. By 8:45 us and the others waiting for the bus outside the tourism office were getting worried. Since the tourism office opened at 9 am, we planned on asking them what was going on when the coach bus just then screeched to a stop. Apparently, there was a bad accident on one of the main roads into Glasgow which led to the delay. We got on board and then headed off!

We crossed the Clyde river and started our way out of Glasgow - by heading south to go north! After a bit we crossed the river again over the Erksine Bridge -a long bridge suspension bridge, and then followed the river Clyde for a while to the west. We then swung upwards along the A82 to Loch Lomond, the first of the many lochs we passed on our day's journey. Loch Lomond is the largest surface area of the freshwater lochs on the United Kingdom mainland but the second largest in terms of volume. (Loch Ness owns that title of largest volume!) It was rather hard to see from the road along the loch, especially as the day was very overcast and misty. But it was a sight to see! There's a couple islands on the loch, the largest actually has one of the oldest nudist colonies on it! Ben Lomond (3,195 ft and the most Southern of the Monroe peaks) is on the other side of the loch from the West Highland Way and was just as a sight to see as the loch itself.

*Ben (or Beinn) is Scottish for mountain. The Munro's are all mountains over 3,000 which were first compiled by Sir Hugh Monro - thus named after him.

We continued heading towards the north of the loch and stopped at the town of Inveruglas. This is at the mouth of the loch - in fact Inver as well as Aber are Gaelic names that mean"the mouth of." We stopped here for a restroom break as there is a visitor's center. I, however, didn't go inside right away but did some walking around on the paths around the visitor's center taking in the beauty of the loch. Since it was drizzling and cold out, I headed inside for a cup of tea. After about 20 minutes we all got back on the bus and then headed on our way.

From there, we followed the A82 through Glen Falloch which takes us up to the town of Crainlarich. This is a town at a crossroads through which the West Highland Way (a hiking path through Scotland), two major roads, and the West Highland Railway. It was a small town and we just drove on through it and continued along the A82 north towards Fort William. This took us past the Loch Tulla, a tiny loch but I was happy about it because it was on my side of the coach bus! Keeping on this road, we went along a ridge of mountains called the Black Mount. This mountain ridge runs between Glen Orchy and Glen Coe while traveling along the outer edge of Rannoch Moor. The Black Mount is very popular for skiing in Scotland with tall mountains covered in snow still - but Rannoch Moor on our right is a huge vast plain full of bogs and small lochs. It's a very barren land, almost a desert. There is a barren Rowan tree growing out a rock along the A82 - though we were going too fast for me to get a good picture of it. It was also while climbing the Black Mount that we stopped and saw the Red-Tailed Deer.

Then, our path took us into the famous Glencoe. The mountain at the entrance to Glen Coe is Buachaille-Etive-Mor, nicknamed the Shepard of Etive because its peak stands out so prominently and makes the entrance to the glen. Right behind the Buachaille-Etive-Mor is Buachaille-Etive Beag, known as the Little Shepard of Etive. Behind these two peaks is the more famous Bidean nam Bian, with the western peaks more commonly known as "The Three Sisters - Faith, Hope, and Charity" These peaks were gorgeous even in the blah weather that day! After stopping to get pictures of The Three Sisters, we got back on the bus and continued through Glencoe while our driver told us about the famous history of the glen.

Glencoe was the home of the clan MacDonald for many years. However, there were disputes between the neighboring Campbell clan, mostly over the cattle and herds. It got to the point that it became nasty during the great clan wars. It escalated till 1691 when King William III declared a pardon on all clans that fought against him, as long as they swore an oath by January 1. Reluctantly, the leader of the clan agreed and headed to the nearest magistrate - but went to the wrong city! The Campbell had a hand in the mess up. By the time he got to the right city, it was 6 days past the deadline and what resulted was that the Campbell clan recieved orders to kill the MacDonalds. So the famous massacre at Glencoe of the MacDonald happened the morning of February 13 when the Campbells betrayed the hospitality of the MacDonalds (it was common to shelter even your enemy from the weather) and murdered the clan.

The tiny village of Glencoe featured more recently in a nearly famous movie called Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkeban as Hagrid's hut as well as the view around it were filmed on site right up the hill from the village of Glencoe.

From Glencoe, we came upon Loch Leven and quickly crossed over the Ballachulish bridge between Loch Leven and Loch Linnhe. It was around this time in the morning that the sun decided to peak out from the clouds and the day turned into a rather nice day though still somewhat cloudy. Loch Linnhe is also the start of the Caledonian Canal. This canal, started in 1803 but finished in 1822 and later reworked in 1847, traverses the Great Glen of Scotland and connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the North Sea. It makes use of the 5 lochs along the Great Glen and a total of 29 locks and canals to connect the two waters. It was along this that we spent the majority of our afternoon following.

Loch Linnhe was gorgeous and the road followed right along the shore - my side of the bus! We followed Loch Linnhe up the length till we came to Fort William with the gorgeous Ben Nevis on our right. Fort William is an old town naturally with a fort that was built to protect the eastern end of the Great Glen. Ben Nevis, the peak dominating over Fort William, is the tallest in the United Kingdom coming in at 4,400 feet! We stopped at the Ben Nevis visitor's center at the base of the mountain for lunch. This also marked the end of the West Highland Way hiking path and started the Great Glen Way.

After lunch, we started off into the Great Glen. The road we were on took us a little away from the River Lochy and into the town of Spean Bridge. It was at this little village that we stopped at the Commando Memorial as seen in my pictures. This was also where I got some great pictures of the Great Glen itself. Next, we then headed back towards the Caledonian Canal and came upon Loch Lochy which was gorgeous to see with the high mountains on the other side jutting up from the water. It also helped that the sun popped out a bit!

We then crossed over a bridge to the other side of the lochs where we saw Loch Oich - though it was tiny and hard to see through the trees. There was a monument along this road known as the Seven Heads - it's just a small column with seven heads on the top. The story goes that there were two sons of the MacDonnel clan were murdered upon their return because their seven uncles wanted the boy's fortune. In response, all seven of the uncles were beheaded at that sight and that is the reason for the Well of the Seven Heads. Again, my picture of this turned out really blurry.

After Loch Oich, and crossing the Bridge of Oich, we traveled a little ways until Fort Augustus where we not only saw some of the locks of the Caledonian Canal, but we got our first glance at Loch Ness!

The second to last of the 5 lochs of the Caledonian Canal is the famous Loch Ness which is the deepest (around 700 feet deep at it's deepest point!) and has the largest cubic volume of all the lochs in Scotland, beating out Loch Lomond. It's very dark and almost impossible to see deeper than 15 feet into the water because of the peat content of the soil around the loch. It's this that helps hide "Nessie!"- the famous Loch Ness Monster. We had two options to take at this point of the bus tour - to tour the Urquhart castle ruins on the banks of Loch Ness and take the boat back to catch the bus, or an hour boat ride on the Loch Ness. Me, being my love for ancient places and love to take photos, I picked the castle because after exploring the castle ruins, I still would be able to go out on Loch Ness in a boat. Anthony and Thomas, however, opted for just the boat on Loch Ness - so we split up for that hour or so.

The castle ruins were amazing! It was cool to be standing on such a historic place and incredibly ancient too! I naturally took so many pictures! The ruins were was cool because you could actually go up on some of the levels of parts of the castle - like the second floor of the Gatehouse and the two levels of Grant Tower. The oldest ruins on the site date back to 1230 but there are remains of Pictish settlements that could date back to 597! The Castle Urquhart was ruined to the present conditions in 1689 when a small garrison of William and Mary held abandoned the castle to the Jacobites - however, they blew up most of the castle before they left. Since then, it has remained in the same condition and left to the wear of the weather.

I only had about 45 minutes to walk around the ruins after I watched the short history clip in the newly built Visitor's Center and did some brief shopping in the gift shop. I loved this part of the day the most because I got so many great pictures of both the ruins, Loch Ness, and both of them together! However, I did run into a slight issue about halfway through my walk around the ruins - I ran out of batteries! I had known I was on my last new pair when I started at the castle and hoped to buy some more in the gift shop - but to my surprise they didn't even carry AAA or AA batteries! So I figured that my pair should last me till I'm back on the bus - nope! However, I was able to take a picture or two, then quickly turned off my camera to save the battery juice. By doing this I was able to extend the life of my two batteries till I got back to the bus and gift shop at the Clansman Inn - where I bought batteries! And I got great pictures as well!

I made sure I was at the pier in time to catch the boat back, which was a fun ride as well. It was cool to be on Loch Ness, with the Castle Urquhart ruins just a picture's distance away! It was a very smooth ride back, however I was unable to get any glimpse of Nessie! :-( But I did get a picture of the supposed "Nessie" at the Clansman hotel - it was a statue! But after getting batteries in the gift shop as well as a couple other souvenirs, we got back on the bus and headed on our way again.

From Loch Ness, we kept following the Caledonian canal and glimpsed the small loch of Loch Dochfour before we came upon the great town of Inverness and the Moray Firth which connects to the North Sea. This is the western as well as the most northern part of our journey. Inverness is known as the Capital of the Highlands and is where the annual Highland Games are played. However, being we didn't stop in the city there wasn't much to see. From here, we began our trek home along the A9, also known as the Spine of Scotland.

Most of this leg of the trip was boring as there were not much to see along the way except for the Grampian mountain chain and the former Forest of Atholl. It's former because most of the trees were cut down many years ago. It also was getting dark and stayed that way for most of the trip back as we were so far north in latitude - so by 5 pm it was dark out. One interesting thing we passed along the way back was Blair Castle, which is home to the Atholl Highlanders - the last private army of the Europe. The current Duke of Atholl actually spends most of his time in Africa and only inherited the title as the fortune and land went to various trusts and historical societies. But each year, the army fires it's only cannon and marches down the streets of the town.

Our only stop along the A9 was in Pitlochry, which is a small town which boasts one of Scotland's oldest whiskey distillary as well as Scotland's smallest distillary! We only stopped here for about 20 min for restrooms and a quick bite to eat - however there wasn't much places to eat so it wasn't that great of a stop. From there, we continued on our way back to Glasgow while most of us dozed off for a bit because it was pointless in looking out the windows!

We arrived back in Glasgow about 9 pm, and were dropped off in George Square. Since we hadn't eaten much since lunch (I had brought along two sandwiches and ate the second for dinner!) the three or us, Anthony, Thomas, and myself, stopped at Burger King in Queen Street station before heading back to the hostel. As it was still early, Thomas went down to the lounge area to write some postcards while Anthony and I stayed in the room and chatted while he did his postcards and I uploaded my pictures and added up my receipts. A little while later, Thomas came back with a girl who had just arrived from Germany and didn't know anyone. We all decided to head out for a night on the town since it was still early.

So we first went to the same bar the three of us had been to the night before. Over drinks, we all got into a rather interesting discussion on educational systems and the differences between them as Germany just switched over the main European system while America is still in it's own world. We talked about a lot of other things too and had a good time. However, we wanted to check out a club because we were in the mood to dance and have fun. So, I asked the bartender where a good club around the area was and he directed us to one of the most well known clubs in the area - The Buff. It was odd because he told us it will sound like the worst spot but is one of the best.

His directions? Head up Bath Street till you pass a bar with red awnings, make a right onto that street. Then, at the alleyway, make a right and walk about halfway down the alley and you'll come to the club! Sounds a little fishy - but we were up for an adventure so we followed his directions and got there! It cost 3 pounds to get in, however the bouncer told us we could get in for free as there was only one other person in there at that time - and it was already 11:30! But we went on in - it was free after all, might as well check it out! It looked like a really cool place if it had been busy - nice large dance floor, an upper deck for sitting and having drinks, two bars... and of course you couldn't go wrong with a huge screen showing Mary Poppins! They seriously were playing Mary Poppins! Since it was dead save for us, we sat down with the hopes that it would pick up - it didn't. To top it off, the DJ wasn't even doing a good job at mixing the songs together! So we ended up heading back to the hostel, slightly disappointed.

As it was still decently early, we all headed down to the lounge to watch some tv. Though it just didn't seem like a good night for us to do much as there was nothing on tv worth watching. So, we split our separate ways and headed back to our rooms to crash. I gathered my things together and started typing up stuff on my computer before finally crashing for the night. All in all, it was a great day!


Sorry, this took forever to get posted - but there was just so much to talk about in detail that I wanted to make sure I had right. Without having internet as well as not wanting to spend a long time on my computer in foreign cities, it had to be postponed. But now that it's done, I hope you all enjoy it!