Scotland

So what to do when you have free time in the uk?  Once you get bored of being a tai tai at least.

Go visit the highlands.  So with visions of brave heart in my mind, off I went.

This is braveheart territory.

Ok, and I have to confess that the other reason I wanted to go to Scotland is that I wanted to finish the last of the three peaks, Ben Nevis.  So I managed to persuade some people to follow me up.

For some reason (which I can’t fathom) I get lots of suspicious glares when I mention hiking nowadays.  However, I have to state for the record that the time that we got lost  on Scarfell pike and spent 11 hours (3 hours in the dark) hiking around was not entirely my fault.

And the pictures lie…

Well… At least to a degree.  At least time.  Even though I protest my innocence, no one listens…  Tsk tsk.

Anyway.

Although its 1300+ meters (as compared to Scarfell Pike which almost 1000 meters) this is a much easier climb.

There were also some crazy people running up the mountain as part of a triathlon.  I say crazy (even though other people call me crazy) because this was not a normal day.

The winds were 60km/hr…  Unfortunately I don’t have any photos of this as I was trying not to get blown away.  We were also rained upon the whole way up.  How exciting.

We didn’t get lost this time, but we still had some fun going down the mountain the dark.  Which led to some amusing falls and stumbles.  The upside of this was that the more vocal members of our party decided to suffer in silence least they bite their tongues when they slipped and fell.

The heat of their glares warmed me on the cold way down.

Afterwards we retired to our B&B.  But before I could take any pictures of the food, we had eaten it all.  It was nothing to sing praises about, not like the Chinese meal we had after coming down Scafell Pike.  Oh, and the picture above is what we saw from our room.  Kind of neat eh?

But I digress.

After a beautiful sleep the next day, we went off to see a bit of Fort Williams.

Abandoned castle!  Now all we need is a monster and a princess.

There was even a bridge for the troll to hide under.

Unfortunately, none of our party (not even the blind girl) was eaten or otherwise imprisoned (I wouldn’t have minded some extra space in the car), so off we went to Edinburgh as some people needed to catch a train.