The Wicked Honeymoon.......
The Wicked Honeymoon…....
We drove 735.1 miles….
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3217/2836540297_e9052421e8_m.jpg
... (We clocked it on the van to be precise!) from our flat in Reading to the Northern tip of Loch Lomond. We camped in Ardlui Hotel Marina for our first night, despite being literally camped in a car park and being charged a fortune for the privilege (it was the most expensive place we stayed by far) it was surrounded by beautiful scenery all around.
We had a fitting introduction to Scotland as much it was pouring down with rain and there were swarms of midges all over the place. This just inspired our first piece of Scotland camping ingenuity: an umbrella out the sunroof to keep the midges and rain out, but getting some air in! Genius…
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3227/2836338247_29ee59b12d_m.jpg
It may not be raining in the pic, but it was a short break in the weather that was gone a few minutes later. Which is why we weren’t inspired to take any more photos unfortunately!
After few minor mishaps (we put down to getting used to living out of a van again e.g. water spillages etc) we kipped down to a well deserved sleep.
The next morning (11am so it still counts) we headed towards Oban where we hoped to do some Whale watching. We picked up some leaflets from Loch Lomond, took advantage of the phone signal and called them as we drove. Elaine called; I drove in case you’re worrying! We booked ourselves onto a 2 hour trip with a company called Sea-fari who operate off of the island of Seil a short drive from Oban.
Seil is a beautiful island, but I am still amazed they get away with calling themselves an island. This is all that separates them from the mainland:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3211/2837177282_9b6b1da9de_m.jpg
Known as the Bridge Over the Atlantic and it literally is. It is actually called Clachan Bridge and it makes Seil an island! Like I said, it’s a bit dubious if you ask me, especially when you consider they had to dredge the channel to keep it open. I think there was some reason for this other than keeping Seil an island but I forgot, because in my head it was just to keep the island separate and any other reason was an excuse! If any locals read this they will probably strongly disagree and black mark my name next time we visit!
Anyway, we had a wicked tour of the surrounding slate islands where they used to mine a huge amount of slate. At one point I think the area was the primary exporter of slate for the whole British Empire (or Europe or the world, I can’t remember!), situated behind various forms of sea walls. One by one they fell into disrepair for many different reasons and now lie as monuments to their time:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3060/2886032514_062ee8c272_m.jpg
We saw Porpoises, Seals, Gannets (the birds not Elaine and I!) and we lucked out and saw a Whale for the first time! Funny, we travelled the whole of New Zealand and somehow never managed to get ourselves on a whale tour there! We go to Scotland and finally see one. These were Minke Whales that popped up several times and we luckily got a few pics:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3092/2836347011_3130cb29e4_m.jpg
There are other tours that go out specifically to see the whales, but these are on bigger slower boats. So firstly you wouldn’t have had the fun of burning about on a fast speed boat:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3164/2836492039_9d2440e5f8_m.jpg
Secondly you wouldn’t have seen all the other wildlife as much as we did. Thirdly we saw the whales too! In fact our boat spotted them first and the whale watchers arrived slowly after us. All in all Sea-fari was ace!
We finished up, bought some novelty tea towels and went to camp in the local Inn by the bridge, for the price of 2 meals and a few drinks, I could handle that!
Next day we got up early and drove to Loch Shiel with the main aim of seen the Glenfinnan Monument and Castle Tioram. Most annoyingly we arrived at the wrong end of the loch for the monument. I entirely blame the almost impossible to use Rough Guide to the highlands. Our choice of guide book I attribute to a wedding hangover! Anyway, we still saw the castle:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3018/2836542777_d6a26fbd23_m.jpg
And took some nice pics: (this is one of Elaine’s)
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3252/2885216981_60a6101697_m.jpg
Next we headed to Mallaig staying a night before getting the ferry to Skye. Incidentally we stayed at the Silver Sands campsite just South of Mallaig, it was breathtaking:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3261/2836543055_ed5be73697_m.jpg
This picture doesn’t really do it justice, this little beach was pure white sand and it was much sunnier, but look at it!! The only other place I’ve seen sand this white was the Whitsundays in Australia, and this is Scotland! People ask why you went there on your honeymoon! They’re the crazy ones. This is only a small beach, there are more to come, and we’ve not even started on the mountains & glens! We resurrected our old travelling game of rate my beach, this one gets an 8.5.
Pretty good.
This is the view the next morning where we camped:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3242/2836366267_2184b7a8a0_m.jpg
From Mallaig we went to Skye, which you can see over the water in the pic above.
We got the Ferry over to Skye, and pretty much drove straight to the Talisker Distillery:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3157/2836372275_52cdbd0f81_m.jpg
This was our first ever distillery tour and it was cool, it was the first step on my journey to learn to appreciate whiskey. Elaine already had a fair appreciation and enjoyed a wee dram but I had struggled to find one I really liked. This one was OK, but I still ended up giving most of my one free dram (pretty poor I felt) to Elaine, who then was a bit flushed so I had to drive the rest of the day.
We then headed to Portree to continue the hunt for walking boots. Elaine already had some that she bought in Mallaig, but I couldn’t believe how hard it was to find a good walking boot shop in the flippin Highlands! Do we sound old now, rambling on Honeymoon!!!
Next trip we’ll go snowboarding, much more street.
Anyway, we weren’t massively impressed with Portree, not least because we couldn’t find any boots. As we wandered round the pretty touristy town we saw what looked and smelt like a wicked fish and chip shop, only to walk in and be told they were closing up for lunch!!!!!! WHAT SORT OF FISH AND CHIP SHOP CLOSES FOR LUNCH!!!! ARE THEY INSANE!!!! I was angered by this, a lot. So we left Portree and headed on a tiny road across the Island (amazing drive) arriving at Neist Point:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3193/2837211666_65dcb32768_m.jpg
Which also had a light house:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3104/2837214414_ac40f1ca61.jpg?v=0
This was where we camped the night and broke down for the first time.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3001/2836387353_d0856b56ac_m.jpg
It could have been a nightmare, but we reasoned that there were worse places in the world we could have broken down. We spent 3 glorious hours looking at the scenery on a sunny day with Elaine tramping up and down the area in her new walking boots. Still, we decided that was enough of Skye, and once we were up and running we stocked up on supplies and headed over the bridge back to the mainland. Over to the Eileen Donan Castle:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3234/2837225942_9edf9ff31c.jpg?v=0
Amazingly picturesque place, but inside it wasn’t as cool as I remembered it from when I was 10 or so. Still, we had a wicked fire on the beach on the Loch overlooking the castle and we drank whiskey that night. Basically we really got into the Scottish spirit.
From there it was off to Applecross for 4 nights. We drove over the much anticipated Bealach Na Bar or Pass Of The Cattle! A famous road known as one of the highest and steepest in the country and one I’d been excitedly telling Elaine about for days…..
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3205/2837230712_80fa5551ea_m.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3020/2837404610_e570fc0a3f_m.jpg
Told you it was hardcore. Some pics of the road itself:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3024/2837231628_f8d60f3101_m.jpg
The view up the road, as it goes between those two mountains…..
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3174/2837235548_316365c482_m.jpg
Down the valley from the road…
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3203/2837236402_8fe4c8db73_m.jpg
The hardcore bit, well there are bits with massive drop offs that are more hardcore but this still looks cool!
I’d been looking forward to Applecross the whole trip, as I had fond memories of it from when I came with my parents years ago and really wanted to show Elaine. To be honest though it is a great place for families, it is beautiful and we went on one or two cool little walks….
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3028/2837247602_2fd99c2435_m.jpg
I think however 4 days was a bit too long. We also broke down again, and because the camp site is quite sheltered from the wind the midges were unreal. So we didn’t rate this as our best stop. We did however see Lewis and Amy who were randomly holidaying at the same time, and after we texted them a few days earlier saying where we would be, they turned up at the campsite! Sadly it seems we lost a few photos in the aftermath of the trip and don’t have any of us all together!
From Applecross we drove straight to Durness which was Amazing! Here there were little or no midgies a definite bonus. We stayed at Sango Sands camp site and the whole area has incredible beaches, cool caves, tons of walks (that we didn’t do!), and situated right next to where you can get a tour to Cape Wrath. This is just one of the coolest places we went to; we definitely plan to come back here.
Unfortunately we were only there for 1 night but we crammed a lot into that time…...
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3110/2837275828_8a394cf8de_m.jpg
Flying kites and swimming in the sea. No pics of me in the sea because Elaine was too busy building her kite :-/ but I did do it, honest.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3173/2836539781_e3f8690eb6_m.jpg
We saw Smoo Cave AND took the trip to Cape Wrath lighthouse, the most North Westerly point on the British mainland.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3225/2837174238_774562e5ce_m.jpg
Elaine got an earful of the fog horn…
From there we headed across the top stopping at the Queen Mums old castle, Castle Mey. We arrived too early that day for the castle to be open to the public, but that didn’t stop Elaine trying to get in, until I stepped in. You can take the girl out of Basingstoke….
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2212/2837294186_7c46250bac_m.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3009/2837293264_9b21b40e32_m.jpg
It was a nice place actually. Good little holiday home!
From here we went straight to Thurso where we tried to get a ferry to the Orkney Islands (that actually leaves from Scrabster). We couldn’t board the ferry because I didn’t have photo ID! Unreal, why would you need a passport (pretty much the only photo ID I have) to go to a part of the British Isles!!! This angered me too as I’m sure you can imagine, but when I calmed down we just agreed to add it to our growing list of things to do next time.
From here we headed to John O’Groats (the most North Easterly point on the British mainland). Very poor, this picture sums it up….
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3182/2836451419_d17105a6cd_m.jpg
Imagine if you’d cycled all the way from Lands End (and we saw a lot of people who clearly had) and this is what greeted you! Rubbish! After much grumbling from me as Elaine checked out all the tourist shops, we left and headed to Dunnet Point. The most Northerly point on the British mainland…..
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3198/2836448385_1c79df717e_m.jpg
This place was cool. Surrounding this area are many remnants of buildings left from the 2nd World War. There are a lot of these derelict buildings all over the North coast of Scotland.
This area was a source of paranoia for the British government during the war because they thought the Germans could sneak in as it is so sparsely populated. Scapa Flow just over the water to the right of this picture (between the Orkney Isles as far as I’m aware) was the main naval base for both the 1st & 2nd World Wars, but was not greatly fortified because we tried 2 different locations first and messed it up! They were rightly paranoid because there were a few attacks on the place too, in a simple summary! More info here:
Good ol Wikipedia.
So we stayed the night at Dunnet point and from there drove down to Dornoch where we hoped to catch up with Lewis & Amy, but they heard we were coming and legged it a few hours before we arrived! On the way to Dornoch we stopped at Wick, because in a Wicked van we had to. There was really no other choice in the matter:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3035/2837298276_10ca9b8a3f_m.jpg
We also randomly stumbled across the Disney Land castle! (actually called Dunrobin Castle)
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3088/2837309482_afa6cfa464_m.jpg
Here we saw a falconry display including a Golden Eagle!
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3231/2837302996_d9e8938809_m.jpg
There was lots of other cool stuff too, and to see all our pics on Flickr go to the following link:- (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikegolf).
To continue, we stayed one night at Dornoch and in the morning we realised how far North we still were!
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3198/2886091718_5c2dc5457b.jpg?v=0
So we drove to what we thought would be a nice secluded and scenic campsite a fair way down South… Not bad going for 1 day!
The camp site turned out to be one of these massive family holiday camps full of people sat in their camper vans watching their TV’s! Not really what we were after, it was not as secluded, peaceful, barren and beautiful as the westerly and northerly parts of Scotland we had visited. It really felt like we had left the beauty of the Highlands behind.
This really was the beginning of the end of our trip (I’m sure after all this reading you’re actually relieved!). The next day we drove past Edinburgh via Castle Aberdour (that I made up!)....
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3192/2836483101_9ab6595a8f_m.jpg
.... on to my parents house in Malton N Yorkshire. Another long drive but on better roads so we covered the ground faster. We spent a few days at my parents where they put us to work in the garden; we celebrated my Dads birthday and then headed south to begin the cleanup operation after the wedding.
All in all an amazing day and Wicked honeymoon and we would like to say special thanks to everyone who was there and helped get everything ready. Especially to our parents who are legends and without you we’d never have had such an amazing day!
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3143/2831926563_c3f330c38e_m.jpg
Yo.
You’re gonna need to re-size all those images, mate.
You’re joking right!
You’ve no idea how long that took us, why? wwwwwwwwwwwhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
For dramatic effect.
These are straight from Flickr as were all the other ones we used back in the day, they should be exactly the same size as flickr automatically optimizes them to the same size.
Is it that causing the text to go off the edge?
To be honest there’s no way I’m re-sizing them all, nothing you can do?
I’m knackered. Gonna go to sleep, I might be @rsed to do it tomorrow but can you let us know if its that causing the text problem and what dimensions the images need to be please.
Cheers.
Well decpite not really being able to read your story with a few words being missed.. the photos are awesome!!
Makes me proud that im from this part of the world. Even though i still cant wait to get out of here!
Of course, the west coast of Scotland is a million times better than the east. Some of it so untouched and beautiful. If anyone travells to Scotland, the west coast is a must! Dont bother coming east unless you want to do some shopping!
I’m knackered. Gonna go to sleep, I might be @rsed to do it tomorrow but can you let us know if its that causing the text problem and what dimensions the images need to be please.
Cheers.
Sent you a PM, mate.
Wow that looks amazing! When I come back from Oz I am going to do a tour of the UK and Scotland I cannot wait to go to! :D Congratulations by the way!
Mike - I’ve sorted your post, chap.
I know the pics are little bit small now, but short of resizing your pictures manually, you’re kind of stuck with the options on Flickr. I merely linked to the small version of your images on Flickr, as opposed to the medium size (Flickr default size) that you linked to.
Looks amazing :D But some of the east coast is good as well 8)
maybe a few people on here could pick up that there is some fantastic scenery on this island - doesnt need a 10,000 mile flight to go see something amazing!
I’ve always said we should have a camping meet on an island on the west coast :wink:
I’ve always said we should have a camping meet on an island on the west coast :wink:
I’ll be there!
Wick! Glad you guys liked the pics and story, Scotland is awesome and I’d highly recommend it to anyone. Yes, the West coast is probably the more picturesque but the East coast does have some little gems. Dunrobin Castle! And I’m sure theres more but we ran out of time!
If anyone is interested in seeing the full size pics you can find them in our Flickr site:
[urlhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/mikegolf[/url]
Big thanks to Tom for fixing the pics in the post by the way!
