Thursday 23rd October 2008 - Summer 2008 Photography Tour Blog - Part 2

* * * * * * * * * *

Saturday morning we were up and away from Glasgow for around 7am in the morning and made our way past Loch Lomond up to Oban on the West Coast of Scotland where we visited McCaig's Tower which overlooks the town of Oban giving you a good view of the town, harbour and bay area.

On the way out of Oban we made a short detour to visit Dunollie Castle which sits on a small hill overlooking the sea.

Once we had taken some pics around Dunollie Castle we were back into the car and heading further up the North West coast in the direction of Fort William where we had planned to stop off for lunch. Just before reaching Fort William we paid a visit to Ben Nevis and changes the plans a little as we walked a couple of miles up the start of the Nevis Range trail.

With time marching on a little and traffic being quite busy to get into Fort William we had to scrub it from the plans and instead travelled East a little to the Glencoe area to shoot a few more quick pics before heading even further North now in the direction of Kyle which is found at the mainland side of the Skye Bridge.

En route to Kyle we found one of the highlights of the entire holiday completely by chance as we stopped off to take some pics of the mountains and valleys in that part of Scotland and where we stopped in a layby we then saw a field full of hundreds upon hundreds of small Stone Cairns (a pile of stones all on top of each other that you would normally find at the top of a hill or mountain that gets added to by everyone who makes it to the top).

Two further stops happened at castles we passed by en route to Kyle, first off being Castle Stalker which sits quite isolated out in the water of Loch Laich and is more famous as being the Castle used at the end of Monty Python and the Holy Grail...

...and then a bit further North we arrived at Eilean Donan Castle which is much more accessible from the main road via a small stone footbridge.

We were finally at the Skye Bridge with the time already after 4pm, so we had another 3 and a bit hours of daylight left if we were lucky, after crossing the bridge we followed the signs for Portree as from there I knew if we followed the road from there to Staffin we would find the rock formation known as "The Old Man Of Storr" and sure enough within 10 miles or so of Portree we were able to snap some photographs of it in the flesh after only seeing low res images of it on the net before.

Continuing up the North East coast of Skye brought us past Lealt and Kilt rock still heading towards Staffin.

Two more stops remained on the Isle of Skye - The Quiraing which is an elevated section of the island which gives you the chance to overlook a good whack of the distance you had to drive to get to it, and then we had Dunvegan Castle as our final stop-off. Getting to The Quiraing got a little more interesting for the final few miles as the road became much narrower and rougher than the single track roads we had travelled to get there, so we had to take our time in the Monaro not only because of the loose stone surface of the roads, but also for all the sheep and other wildlife who's home you are choosing to invade with your car.

]

]

So far we had managed to squeeze so much into our first real day out in the highlands and Islands of Scotland and with the sky starting to turn black, the wind getting extremely strong and the rain starting to fall we decided to cut Dunvegan Castle from the end of todays list. By the time we were about 15 minutes from Skye Bridge it was already getting treacherous to drive with the extremely heavy Monaro being blown about from all directions and that final section of road was driven at speeds hitting 20-30mph at the most due to lots of standing water now being found on the remote island single track roads.

Once we had checked into our hotel back over the bridge in Kyle we heard that the road we had just travelled down was now closed due to a fatal accident, so it was a good job that we chose to leave when we did otherwise we could have been stuck on the island in the middle of nowhere for some time until everything was opened once again by the police.

Sunday morning greeted us with blue skies and little to no wind, a stark contrast to the weather which we had encountered the evening before, only going to show how wild and barren this area of Scotland is when you're used to living in the cities, a completely different way of life.

After grabbing a quick photograph of Skye Bridge we were heading East to allow us to connect up with the next road heading North towards Ullapool which would be our first official stop off of the day.

On the way to Ullapool we happened upon Glascarnoch Dam, an area which provided us with what ended up being one of the best landscape images of the entire trip:-

After leaving the Ullapool area there were a few other good opportunities for photographs that we found as you can see below on our way Northward once again:-

We decided that we wanted to visit Durness, Kinlochbervie and "Smoo Cave" in the North West corner of Scotland before starting to make our way back East towards John O'Groats, and with leaving early at the start of the day it gave us time to stop off and shoot some other spots that weren't even included on the original plan too.

So, first up it's Durness where we found Fanaid Head beach...

... and the "Historic Durness Church".

Next up it was the short drive to Kinlochbervie which gave an awesome view looking over the almost crystal clear sea on the North Coast of Scotland, which we would see much more of later in the day. Getting to Kinlochbervie is pretty much a one road in, one road out affair incase you wonder why we then appear back around Durness again for the next stop.

And then finally to Smoo Cave which is found a little bit East of Durness on the North Coast, where we found another style of stone signature like we did near Fort William - this time the people had simply used the stones to spell out their name which you could see from the top of the cliff as you made your way down to the entrance of the cave.

Smoo Cave was on the list from early on due to one of Mireille's favourite words being Shmoo when she doesn't believe what someone tells her - so it HAD to be visited along the way.

From Smoo Cave it was then time to make the major leg of the trip along the single track country roads that link the North West of Scotland to the North East of Scotland - so with our sights firmly set on John O'Groats we were once again back in the car and driving East, but with some absolutely stunning scenery found along the way which we had to stop and grab a photograph of.

First up of the unplanned stops was Scourie Beach and Burial Ground:-

Huge valley with a small stream running down through it:-

And a few other miscellaneous stops:-

And then we finally reached our target for the day, John O'Groats - the most northernly point of mainland Britain. We were a bit dissapointed that with us arriving around 6.30pm that they had already removed the main arm of the famous sign that points southward to Lands End, so we ended up having to make the most of the cheap and nasty sign that they have placed on one of the walls at the harbour. Time for a few quick photographs around the visitor centre before starting to head South to Wick where we would be spending the night and bringing day 2 of this leg of the tour to an end.

Day 3 of this leg of the tour found us a little more drained after the amount we had packed into the previous days of the holiday so far, and resulted in us having a longer lie than normal, 8am kickoff, yes that was a long lie believe me compared to some of the other days and as such we had to cut down a little on our plans for the day.

Heading south from Wick we stopped off at Dunrobin Castle which doesn't look too special from the view you get approaching it on the main road...

...but if you choose to venture a little closer then it's definitely one of the better looking castles we visited during our 18 day trip.

Inverness was scheduled to be the next main stop on the list, but this ended up being cut out and instead we continued further South to Drumnadrochit, which probably doesn't sound familar unless you have already paid a visit previously to Loch Ness as it's where you will find the visitor centres for the world famous loch and it's infamous monster.

And being so close to Castle Urquhart we had to pop along and visit it before leaving the shore of Loch Ness.

The historical battlefield of Culloden was our final photo stop for the day before heading to Aberdeen where our hotel would be for the next two nights.

As we passed through countryside on our way to our hotel in Aberdeen we happened upon a number of fields near the village of Huntly with haybales dotted all over them.

The final day on this leg of our tour was nicknamed "Tour of the Castles" for the simple reason that we were starting the day off at our hotel in Aberdeen, planning on visiting a total of 8 different castles during the day before returning back to the same hotel that night to bring leg 2 to closure.

Castle #1 for the day - Tolquhon Castle

Castle #2 for the day - Fyvie Castle

Castle #3 for the day - Huntly Castle

Castle #4 for the day - Kildrummy Castle

Castle #5 for the day - Glenbuchat Castle

Castle #6 for the day - Braemar Castle

Castle #7 for the day - Crathes Castle

Castle #8 for the day - Drum Castle

...and then back to the hotel in Aberdeen. I think you could safely say that we were somewhat "castled out" by the end of the day.

The next day we drove back to Glasgow to say cheerio to mum and prepare for our drive South through the West of England, stopping off in Blackpool for a night, then heading down to the Cardiff area of Wales and then on to London - stopping off at several more castles along the way.

Part 3 coming soon...

PREVIOUS BLOG ENTRIES

2008-10-22 - Summer 2008 Photography Tour Blog - Part 1

2008-10-20 - Some photos from Minnesota

2008-09-14 - Monaro On Tour Photographs

2008-06-26 - Integration, Supporting the Nation & Happy Anniversary Irmscher

2008-02-28 - Dr Remington Strikes Again and Life In Germany

2008-02-17 - Have I Just Done A Britney?

The images contained in this site are protected by copyright - no copying or use without prior written consent