I decided to go on a one day tour over to Loch Ness and the Highlands this week with Haggis Adventure Tours, one of the many companies offering short one - five day trips.
It was £43 but I wanted to have a little taster of the famously beautiful Highlands before all the leaves came off the trees. It did mean that the last half of the day was just travelling back to Edinburgh in the dark (it's dark by 4.30pm at the moment) but it was a good trip and I'm definitely keen to get back over there and see more! The guide was an older guy who was raised on one of the Islands off the west coast and speaks Gaelic as his first language, so a true Highlander! There was about 12 others on the bus (including, as always, some Aussies and even some more Kiwis) but I think a lot of them just tuned out the guide most of the time as his accent was quite strong. I think I could understand him better than the others after getting used to the accent over the last few months, though it still took a bit of concentration!
It was £43 but I wanted to have a little taster of the famously beautiful Highlands before all the leaves came off the trees. It did mean that the last half of the day was just travelling back to Edinburgh in the dark (it's dark by 4.30pm at the moment) but it was a good trip and I'm definitely keen to get back over there and see more! The guide was an older guy who was raised on one of the Islands off the west coast and speaks Gaelic as his first language, so a true Highlander! There was about 12 others on the bus (including, as always, some Aussies and even some more Kiwis) but I think a lot of them just tuned out the guide most of the time as his accent was quite strong. I think I could understand him better than the others after getting used to the accent over the last few months, though it still took a bit of concentration!
The tour gave me heaps of ideas of where to check out more, like Uruquart Castle, Perth, the West Highland Highway (in the top 3 rail journeys in the world apparently) and Doune Castle.
Leaving at 8am, the route when up past Falkirk, Stirling, Callander, Loch Tulla, through Glencoe and Fort William then to Fort Augustus, a town on the lakes of Loch Ness. There was about 1.5hours at Loch Ness where there was the option to go on a cruise over the lake, then the way back went alongside the Cairngorms National Park, Pitlochry and Perth before getting back to Edinburgh at about 7.15pm. Apparently in the Summer it takes longer with all the extra traffic, but because it was so quiet at the moment we even got to stop at a few more photo spots than the Summer trips so that was great!
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| Loch Tulla look out |
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| Bonus ruins!! Inverlochy Castle |
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| Standing where the moat would have been! |
My favourite part was going through Glencoe - it was definitely a wow moment as the bit we stopped at came up quite suddenly after going through a flat marshy area called Rannoch Moor:
The drive through the Fort William area was quite nice, going past lots of different lakes through the mountains, like going through the lake district at home. Then we got to Loch Ness via a town called Fort Augustus. Loch Ness is nice - it was great to see it with some of the Autumn colours still on the surrounding hills.
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| Had a quick look for any mysterious dark shapes or disturbances in the water.... |
Oh and turns out finding Nessie isn't that hard: ;)
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