Snapshots of Scotland

It was my dad who first instilled a love for Scotland in me. I was very young, not more than six, and he would hitch me up on his shoulders and march around our basement to the, sometimes uplifting and sometimes mournful, tunes of the pipes and drums of the Black Watch. Eventually, I started to immerse myself in Scottish history,reading about famous battles like Bannockburn and Culloden, and learning about the exploits of Robert the Bruce, William Wallace and Bonnie Prince Charlie and that most tragic of queens, Mary Stuart.

So you see, visiting Scotland has been on my bucket list from an age before I even knew what a bucket list was and, now that I’ve visited, I should probably cross it off my list and move on. But something tells me that I have only just started exploring Scotland and that, before too long, I will return.

What we did (in a nutshell)

On this trip we stayed in Edinburgh for 3 days and then drove north where we used Nairn as a base to explore the Highlands. In Edinburgh we stayed in a spacious apartment in Chessels Court just off of the Cannongate area of the Royal Mile. It was central enough for us to walk everywhere – and walk we did, all over Old Town and New Town and Dean Village. Naturally we also ‘did the sights’: Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood Palace and Abbey, St Giles’ Cathedral, the Scott Memorial.

On our way to the Highlands we caught a glimpse of the Kelpies from the motorway, stopped for lunch in a pretty little village called Pithlochry and then continued northwards through the gorgeous scenery of the Caingorms National Park.

In Nairn we had a whole house all to ourselves but spent a lot of time in the surrounding countryside and on the endless stretches of beaches. But we did take the time to visit Culloden Moor, Inverness, the ‘clootie well’ at Munlochy, Loch Ness, Cannich, and, since you can’t visit Scotland and not drink some whiskey (even though I am not fond of it) we toured Benromach distillery.

I will write separate posts about all the beautiful sights we saw in Edinburgh and the Highlands at a later date.

First impressions

Describing Scotland as beautiful is like saying that the sea is blue. There is so much more to it than that. It is wild, fascinating, mysterious and magical all rolled into one. I feel like I don’t have enough adequate words to describe this country and it’s not often that I am rendered speechless. In my mind, I’ve always associated it with tartan and whiskey; Highland clans and craggy mountains; glens and lochs; thistles and unicorns, far-flung islands shrouded in rolling mists; mighty castles and abandoned abbeys; bagpipes and kilts; Walter Scott, Robert Burns; MacBeth and Jamie Fraser.

Despite the fact that I do not have one drop of Scottish blood in my veins, I felt an extraordinary kinship with this land. It truly is the stuff of romance and legends. Scotland, you rock!

Various locations in Scotland, August/September 2018