Scotland
We continued our road trip from England to the country for which we really came to the UK, SCOTLAND. Shortly after we passed the first village in the Scottish border (Gretna), we saw that there was a sign for a scenic route on the highway to our first real Scottish stop, Edinburgh. In a second we chose the scenic route instead of the boring highway. The views on the route rewarded us from minute one after making this choice.
Once we arrived in Edinburgh, we took a walk with Thor to Arthur’s seat.
You can certainly expect a short but sloping walk to a very nice viewpoint on the old town.
After the walk we left Thor alone in our campervan for an hour so that we could explore the city on our own. Edinburgh surprised us very much, it is a city whose authenticity has been very well preserved. Many whiskey shops, men in kilts and bagpipes and old but beautifully preserved architecture, makes the city unique. We are usually not fond of cities but this is definitely one we would recommend to everyone.
At the end of the day we visited Dunnottar castle.
Tip for visiting this castle: Do this in the evening or early in the morning. It is a beautiful castle but probably very busy during the day due to the amount of tourists. We took a nice walk with a view of the castle during sunset.
Cairngorms national park was our beautiful next stop. In this national park we did a hike with a lot of altimeters. In the few hours that our hike lasted, we saw and felt all seasons. Started in bright sunshine, as the walk progressed we ended up in a snow storm. We eventually even had to turn back at the summit because we were knee-deep in the snow during a snow storm. But regardless of the bad weather conditions we really liked the scenery of the hike and would probably do the hike again if we were in the neighbourhood.
We started the 8th day of our roadtrip, (the days before we were in England) with a stop at Scotland’s most famous ‘loch’ (Scottish for ‘lake’), loch Ness! Searching for monster Nessie we stumbled along the lake.
Loch Ness is very large, we visited it near Fort Augustus. To be fair it was a typical loch, nothing much special.
We would not detour for this in the future.
During the day we visited a Whiskey distillery. We opted for a guided tour with a taster at Singleton or Glen Ord Distillery.
General tip: The distillery we visited was definitely worth a visit, but certainly not the only one in Scotland. Choose one distillery that is on your route and reserve a spot online in advance at a time that suits you.
We spent the night near Portmahomack, we spotted dolphins in the distance and many seals nearby. The area around Portmahomack is known for spotting many animals! This is not a region you would usually visit and that’s exactly why you should. It is not very known, crowded or touristy but has amazing views of the beach and a lighthouse. Again, we managed to find an unbelievably beautiful sleepspot.
coordinotes:: 57°51’53.3″N 3°46’33.8″W
We continued our journey to Scotland’s most famous road, the NC 500.
Without seeing a sign, we immediately knew that we had started at the start of the road because of the enormously beautiful views of the impressive Highlands. We drove quite a distance towards Duncansby Stacks! A short walk to the rocky outcrop is well worth the effort.
John o groats is a nearby village located on the most northerly point of Scotland. We took a photo at the most famous turn signal and stumbled around the village a bit. Afterwards we drove to Dunnet Head and enjoyed an ice cream in our camping chairs with a view of the Shetland and Orkney Islands. Although Dunnet head has amazing sleepspots and is one of the best places in Scotland to spot the Northern lights we drove on to a small village. We parked in a parking lot next to the sea and decided to get to know some locals and drink some pints in a typically, local Scottish pub.
General tip: This region in the north of Scotland is a general recommendation! If you have more time it’s apparently also very worthwhile to take a ferry to the Shetland and Orkney islands and spend a few days here.
This day was dominated by a long day of driving through the beautiful Highlands with several small but beautiful stops. Smoo cave we passed first on our route. It is an underground cave with a waterfall that you can visit. We only admired the view from above but did not go inside the cave.
We continue our journey and stop at Allt nan Uamh Car Park. Here starts a very nice hike of only 2.5 km to caves, these caves are very well preserved from antiquity. We recommend to just search for the coordinates or the parking name on google maps because you can find very little information about this, this definitely is a hidden gem 🙂
We also passed Corrieshalloch corge and Guinard Bay. Corrieshalloch corge is a spectacular waterfall just down the road. Guinard Bay is a beautiful beach with a slightly pink coloured sand where you can often spot seals.
Looking for our sleeping spot we saw a lot of wildlife including highland cows and deer.
We ended up sleeping in a parking lot in Torridon, one of the most iconic villages of the NC500 in between mountains.
During our YouTube research about Scotland we noticed several beautiful images of Applecross pass or “the most dangerous road” in Scotland.
The route is known for its very narrow, winding roads. Good coordination with the traffic in the other direction is definitely a must, but the beautiful views reward you so hard.
For a sweet bite, Manuela’s wee backery is the place to be.
This very cute, beautiful outdoor bakery is located near the Isle of Sky.
A German couple runs the fairytale-like affair. Highly recommended to make a stop here!
One of Scotland’s most famous islands is the Isle of Skye. We made a short stop at their ‘capital’ namely Portree. We took a short walk through the city. From the bay you have a beautiful view of the sea and the mountains behind. Personally, the city was not that special to us, we would not return here.
We ended the day with the Quirang hike. When I (Lien) look back on this road trip, I notice that this was my favorite hike of the road trip. We did about 7 kilometers in 2.5 hours. The beautiful views during the hike were worth climbing the many altimeters. Once you reach the plateau, you can enjoy the beautiful view of the Isle of Skye and the sea. This is definitely one the more unknown hikes in the area so you can expect a bit less crowd as f.e. The old man of storr but equally beautiful scenery. My advice, go and discover it for yourself and let us know what you think afterwards.
General Tip 1: Go either very early or late so that you can take in the most views at a quiet time.
General Tip 2: If you have a drone, don’t forget to bring it with you. Unfortunately, we forgot to take these with us, so unfortunately we were unable to capture beautiful videos from the air.
General tip 3 : Since we unfortunately had to make choices when we were preparing the trip to Scotland, it was very difficult to choose between visiting the Isle of Skye and Isle of Mull. Both are apparently very worthwhile, visiting the Isle of Mull is still on our bucket list.
The second hike we did on the Isle of Skye was The old man of storr. On Instagram you will come across a lot of beautiful photos of the rocky formation.
The hike to the rocks does not take much time compared to the Quirang hike. We started the hike relatively late in the morning at about 9 am, so we crossed a lot of other tourists on the hiking trail. It’s best to start the walk earlier if you don’t like busy tourism.
Fairy pools are a must see in Scotland according to many tourists. If you drive here you can expect many small ‘pools’ with a few small waterfalls. But you can also expect huge mass tourism. We visited the Fairy Pools but we didn’t really understand the charm of the place. In the highlands you see many such places without mass tourism and with even more beautiful ‘pools’ with a view of the highlands.
Afterwards we drove to our place to sleep near The Ben Nevis lodge, here we had a few drinks in the local pub.
We ate haggis here, this is a typical Scottish national dish. It is best to google the contents of the dish yourself.
It sounds very unappetising, but even picky eater Lien, has dared to taste a number of snacks.
To our genuine surprise, the dish was quite tasty.
The plan for the day was to climb Ben nevis, the highest mountain in Brittain.
Unfortunately there was very low fog at the base of the mountain making it very difficult to start the trek to the top.
It is definitely still on our bucket list, but unfortunately it will be for another time.
The Harry Potter fans may know the Glenfinnan Viaduct we visited. You can admire the viaduct from above if you take a short walk from the parking lot. Certainly nice to visit but it is very touristy and here they profit a bit by using expensive the parking costs. We would not return here now we’ve seen it due to the mass tourism and parking costs so you might want to skip this.
Afterwards we drove on to the breathtaking Glencoe region. Our ultimate tip: drive a little further to Glen Etive.
This actually is a tip we got from locals in a pub. While everyone is busy driving through Glencoe you can simple turn into Glen Etive and have a calm, unknown drive through the best scenery of the region. It is a beautiful long road with many beautiful views but a fragment of the James Bond movie Skyfall has been recorded. Finding sleeping spots shouldn’t be a problem on this road although phone reception might be bad.
On our last day in Scotland we made a short stop at Kilchurn castle before starting our return journey.
Kilchurn is an old castle near the Glencoe region. The castle is surrounded by many fences. This made it difficult to get a good view of it. This stop is not a big recommendation.
Afterwards we started our return journey. You can approach the return journey from Scotland to Belgium in different ways. Below you can find more information about the different options.
Return trip, back to Belgium
There are two options for the return journey from Scotland homewards:
1. Ferry from Newcastle towards Ijmuide: boat ride of 15h. Taking cabin is mandatory. If you have a dog, you take an animal-friendly (and more expensive) cabin.
2. Drive back to Southern England and take the ferry/Eurotunnel from there.
We have chosen option 2. Despite the refueling & costs of the Eurotunnel, this is the cheaper option. You do spend a lot of time on your return journey. We did the return trip in 3 days so that we could make nice walks and other stops in between. The main reason why we have made this choice is because it is more practical with our dog.
Honestly I think if we had traveled without a dog we would have chosen to take the boat from Newcastle. It’s more pricey but we could have spent more time in Scotland that way.
General Scotland tips:
– Make sure you have pounds to pay at the parking machines. You can only do this with coins or pay via an app.
– The general rule of courtesy with Scots is to raise your hand when someone passes you on the passing lanes.
– There are only a very few toilette/cassette/water facilities in the UK if you are wild camping.
Look this up carefully. We have found this folder that contains a lot of facilities, some are unfortunately for a paid fee: https://www.campa.org.uk/waste-disposal/
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