Highland Adventure

This weekend we went on an adventure to the north of Scotland and it turned out to be more of an adventure than we could have imagined! Saturday morning we loaded up our rental car and headed north to pick up Becky. We didn't have much of an agenda, just to get Becky to a distillery and see more of Scotland. Out navigation seemed intent on taking us on the most obscure roads out there. Not long into our journey, we discovered just how much it had snowed in the past 24 hours. The roads were covered...at this point it was the slushy/icy kind, that stresses everyone out when driving. No one was really on the road, but we saw a police vehicle coming toward us. Both of us stopped to chat. The police officer reassured us that not long up the road "things will get better". He also told us that "this was nothing", then informed us that he was thinking about wearing a speedo to work that day. We all got a laugh out of that one. The road did get better, but then we turned on to a one lane (not one lane each way, but one lane) road covered in snow. Once we managed to work our way back to the highway, we were much excited.

Due to all the snow on the roads, we missed the tour at the distillery by 5 minutes...we even called, but they said they wouldn't wait. The funny thing about this was that there were only two people on the tour! Even though we knew we were going to miss the tour, we headed to the distillery. It looked like beautiful, quaint place. The workers were really friendly and we took some great photos outside this place, in the countryside.

Once we headed out from the distillery, it was starting to get dark. A worker at the distillery told us a short cut to Inverness, and it seemed that the navigation was telling us the same way to go. As soon as we turned on to the shortcut road, we discovered it was unlike any road we had ever been on...in our lives! It was covered in about six inches of snow. Thankfully, it was powder so we were able to just plow through it in our little car. We wanted to get out and look at the scenery, but had to wait until we got to the top of a hill and could push our car to start again if we had to. Eventually, we ran into a closed road and had to abandon the short cut...which may have been a good idea!

Saturday night in Inverness, we got some dinner at a local pub, checked out the castle (not so impressive compared to Edinburgh) and saw all the crazy "scene girls" out in next to nothing in the freezing temperatures. We stayed in a bed and breakfast, which was a first to me. Breakfast was at 8am, which seemed early, but it was definitely worth rolling out of bed for. The lady was super friendly and made us all a traditional Scottish breakfast that was more than any of us could handle...and held us over to dinner!

Sunday afternoon we hit up Sterling, which really is only 50 miles from Edinburgh. There is a lot of Scottish history that has happened in Sterling. The highlight of Sterling was the William Wallace monument. It was on top of a hill, then you could climb 200 and something (it's the little details I never remember!) to the top for a fantastic view of the whole valley. None of us could believe how windy and freezing it was at the top of the monument. Needless to say, we didn't stay up there long! The stairs were a tight spiral staircase and we had to take breaks because we actually would get dizzy on them!

All in all, it was a great weekend. We had some great and extremely memorable times. And it really was wonderful to experience more of Scotland. I now can't wait until our next Scottish adventure!