Highlands Taxi
At the start of the month I drove my son and his instruments all the way to Skye in a single day, via Callander, Glencoe and Fort William, for a week-long music camp culminating in a four-date tour around Scotland.† It’s quite a drive there from Edinburgh, so I didn’t try to get all the way home the same day, but stayed a night in Roybridge before making my way back through the Cairngorms. Glen Etive and Glencoe were as spectacular as always, and I got a few misty pics of Eilean Donan to add to my castle collages.
After checking a tourist brochure in the B&B for what else was in the area, the next morning I drove up a one-lane road to a lookout onto glacial valleys with parallel “roads” marking the edges of an ice age lake rising higher as its ice dam formed before melting away; with nobody else around but sheep, it felt as remote and tranquil as the far north. After that it was back to Fort William to look for the 13th-century Inverlochy Castle, which was surprisingly difficult to find until I realised on the way back out of town that it was only signposted from the south. The castle is fenced-off at the moment thanks to falling masonry, but you can walk right around and see most of it.
Finally, it was back through Roybridge and east along the A86, stopping at Creag Meagaidh National Nature Reserve to commune with some hielan coos before driving past Loch Laggan to Dalwhinnie and from there home. I was going to check out the Highland Folk Museum as well, but didn’t want to get back to Edinburgh too late. Another time.
It was my first chance to take landscape photos in a while, which are now appended to the most recent Scottish Panoramas and in a new gallery of their own:
A handful of close-ups and quirky sights didn’t really fit there, so here’s a supplementary mini-gallery of those.
†We saw their last show in Stirling on Monday night. Brilliant performances all round.