Highland Tour Part I

[mothwing]

Hm, our plan to go to Inverness for the weekend did not work out, partly due to lacking accommodation in a 20km radius around Inverness, partly due to lack of desire to leave our flat and get on a coach today. Hence, we are back at the Music Department once more and I decided to spam you with some of the photos from the trip. Sorry about that, I have tried to write down as much as possible about the trip while we were touring so that I would not forget things I would want to remember, but of course I did not bring my notes and hence I have to type everything out again. 
Most of the pictures are sadly really touristy and some are a wee bit blurred because they were taking while we were on the coach. Sorry about that. 

Sigh. I love Scotland and I never want to leave again.

15 July, Day one

On the first day of our trip we went from Glasgow to Loch Ness by coach, and the since we had to change at Fort William, it meant that we stayed on the A82 - in other words, past Loch Lomond and Glencoe, in other words, we were surrounded by some of the most beautiful landscape Scotland has to offer most of the time. The weather played along as well and it was strange to see those places again we had only ever seen in winter and autumn, covered in snow, ice  and thick mists, which means also that we were not able to see the mountains on either side most of the time. I had never seen most of the mountains below before. 








The last time I saw that area, which is a glen near Glencoe, all the water was frozen and the grass was brown. Much better like this, although less alien.


I want to go hiking in Glencoe as well...!




Loch Ness. Hmm. Somehow, I did not take that many pictures of it because we had the bad luck to be in an area which is rather unspectacular. Here's two. 


Loch Ness at night. Not as good as I hoped it would turn out to be. 


Loch Ness in the evening. Still a great, big body of water. Loch Lomond's prettier, but I guess you just have to have seen it. Being a tourist in Scotland decrees it.

16 July, Day 2





We spent some time hiking half-heartedly along the dangerous road close to the Youth Hostel and then decided to go and visit Urquhart Castle. Which was absolutely packed with American and German tourists. Boy, that was embarrassing. I hate being a tourist as it is, but being reminded by a whole flock of like-minded people did not exactly make it better. Seeing how my countrymen and women were herded to the caslte and then herded back like dim-witted, badly clad sheep was sickening. Vowed never to be a tourist again. 


Urquhart Castle. With flocking tourists. Why did I not bring the picture on which those flocks are visible? It's pretty funny, actually. 


Stitching is fun. Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle
We had to change in Inverness to get to Rogart, and the weather became as beautiful as it had been the day before. The weather cleared up over the morning, the ghastly white sky I hate so much vanished and we were left with a smooth, blue sky and lots of wind which made the heat easily bearable and filled the centre of the town with a strangely fresh smell that reminded me of the sea, but that may easily have been imagination. I love Inverness. 




The amazingly pretty townhall of Inverness. 


The River Ness in Inverness. The amazingly pretty old town of Inverness which is not visible on this picture due to lack of talent and patience on the part of the woman holding the camera. 
We had lunch on the bench and met a very friendly homeless woman who askerd if we had a spare muffin. We did not, but we offered her a sandwhich which she happily accepted. She has apparently been a sailor most of her life and has been pretty much everywhere. She is the most interesting and friendly homeless person I have ever met, and indeed I do believe she is the only woman I have met before. Strange, when you think about it. There are so many streeties in Hamburg, and yet most of those you meet are men.


Crossing the Ness on our way out of Inverness.
The trouble was that there is no bus from Golspie to Rogart, neither is there a bus to Lower Rogart, also known as Pittentrail, also known as pretty, horse-fly ridden Glen in the middle of nowhere. The friendly coach driver agreed to drop us off at the junction of the road to Golspie and the road to Pittentrail, which left us with an 8km walk towards the village. I had feared that it would rain all day, even though the sky had been blue, but of course it did not and it was a great walk.  The landscape is beautiful, though, but then, the landscape is beautiful every where in the Scottish Highlands. 

What made me sick and sad were tha rabbits. There were dead rabbits every two meters or so, some were so flat only the shapes of the ears let on that it had been a rabbit, some were still covered in the swarming black bodies of flies which swirled up as we passed, some where lying around, bent and twisted at horrible angles - It was terrible! Reminded me a lot of the dead hedgehogs I kept seeing when I was taking driving lessons. 


The Scottish Sky was nominated as one of the "7 Wonders of Scotland". It did not make it, the first places went to things like the Tay Bridge, the Kilt and suchlike, but I would have liked it if the skies had made it, too. They are so beautiful. 




Yes, I know that there is a lot of sky in that picture, thanks, Crocky. 


I could not even say what makes this landscape look so different from the landscape in Hesse that it makes me like landscapes of that kind in GB and dislike those in Hesse and the like extremely. My father once told me that I would probably not even be able to tell the two apart, but I could when he put me to the test. I guess it's the heather.



Somewhere along the trip we started boosting our optimism by telling each other that Pittentrail was bound to be just behind the next hill. I think we gave up after the fourth hill we passed. 

We found the sign and asked the friendly barman in the village pub for directions, and only ten minutes later we were stowing away our stuff in the cosy compartment of the camping coach (whee!! alliteration of doom!) Crocky had booked for us. I am not that fond of trains, but it was a lovely hostel Kate and Frank had made out of the discharged carriages. And they were still very enthusiastic about their hostel, too, which was a nice change after the lady who runs the hostel on the banks of Loch Ness and who borders on being unfriendly nearly all the time. 
Of course, we ran into other German tourists from the South of Germany. They were nice enough, but somehow tourists from my own country tend to... annoy me. For no reason. Maybe it's the dialect mixed with the bad English or something. But these tourists, a whole family, were really nice. 

Sleeping in the Camping Coaches was great for their kids, they were running around the train the whole day. We loved it, too, even though the walls between teh compartments were absolutely not thick enough and sleeping was rather hard with a snoring neighbour

Will spam you again in a bit. Will now go back to reading about the role of lesbians in literature. 

Hugs to all!

EDIT: To put the ramblings about the trip behind the cut as well.

Comments

[lordhellebore]

Beauty! Me is envious (how often have I said this now? *lol*).

Pictures with a lot of sky are beautiful - and come on, I don't remember his name, but there was this ridiculously famous German/Swiss/Austrian? painter who did them all the time - he was so awesome and actually ahead of his time. Everyone copied him after a while.


Loch Ness really isn't al THAT spectacular, but you're right. Being a tourist in Scotland, you have to go there. I would, too. And there'S a world of a difference between that landscape and the one in Hesse. Hesse is...horrible, to use an euphemism. I hate it. This I love.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Lots of sky? The only one who comes to mind is Caspar David Friedrich with is "Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer". I didn't know he was ahead of his time, I just had him down as "typical of the Romantics" if it was him. :)

I guess for Loch Ness you have to like water a lot. Whenever I see a lake or the ocean I tend to go "Yeah. *shrug* Whatever. A huge body of water. Can we go home now?", so that is probably not the best of possible mindsets to explore the Scottish Lochs.

In parts it IS like Hesse, but you are right. This is pretty. Oooh, I hate Hesse as well, as I was forced to spend three horrible summer holidays down there. Baad memories.

[lordhellebore]

Yep, Caspar David Friedrich is the guy. And he was NOT one of those typical Romantics. He practically started the whole thing - he was the precursor of this drawing style.

Hm..I love lakes, and even more the ocean. I could spend hours and hours there.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Fine, then he is the typical Romanticist who started it all. *g*

You've got something in common with Rebecca there. She absolutely loves the ocean and could spend hours on beaches. I tend to get bored far too quickly.

[fourthage.livejournal.com]

I spent two weeks about 15 miles outside of Inverness back in 2001. These pictures are making me feel homesick. Except not. We need a word for longing for non-home places.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

There is one in German. There is "Heimweh", which means "homesickness", and "Fernweh" which means, uh, "longing for something which is far away". Farsickness? Farache?

Oooh, no wonder you are, uh, farsick. Hm, this word doesn't really do. Inverness and the surrounding landscape are sooo pretty! And two weeks! Lucky you!

[fourthage.livejournal.com]

They really are. It was overcast and drizzly the whole time I was there, and my pictures came out very green. I should scan some of them and post them.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Oooh, do that! I'd love to see them, the landscape around Inverness is so pretty!