Highlands Day 1 (8/27)
And we’re off!
After a quick taxi ride to the airport we hopped into our rental car for the first drive of our ‘Highlands’ trip, headed from Edinburgh to Stirling Castle. It was pretty rainy and gross, but the roads were easy and the change to left-side driving wasn’t too hard to manage. We arrived at Stirling around 10am along with some extra potent rain, and thankfully before many of the large tour groups that would show up later in the day. Since the Holyrood tour went so well, we decided again to do the self-guided audio tour, and again it was the right call. There were a lot of exhibits both inside and outside, so we were able to balance what we saw with what the weather was giving us. The views from the castle when we had clear moments were breathtaking, including being able to see the WIlliam Wallace Memorial in the distance.
Our next leg of the trip was a longer, slower drive into the West Highlands towards Ft. William, where our first stop would be Ben Nevis Distillery, which sits at the foot of Ben Nevis mountain, the highest mountain in the United Kingdom. Due to cloud cover we couldn’t see the peak when we arrived at the distillery, but we were able to take a nice tour, and got some samples of their Scotch to bring with us to our B&B to taste later.
From there, it was a short drive to the Crolinnhe Guest house where we were staying the night, which turned out to be a gorgeous, newly redecorated home with fantastic views over the water. We met our host and dropped off our luggage before talking a walk into town to wander the high street and get some dinner. We ended up at the Black Isle Brewing Co., where we had some delicious beer and some tasty pizza in a fun building that looked like it was a converted church. We walked around town a bit more, stopping in a cute booksellers and then getting ice cream at a chip shop to take with us on the walk back to the B&B.
Back at the guest house we drank our Ben Nevis samples, before taking much needed showers and heading to bed early. Tomorrow we head to the Isle of Skye!
