Scotland Part 1: Fort William
DAY ONE
Well I can confirm that waking up at 4:45 was indeed a shock to the system! we left our home at 5 am and made it for breakfast in the Lakes for 9 ish. After that it was a game of how far can we go without needing a wee stop... this was a game I lost. Conveniently there was a little cutsie café/renovated church called 'country mumkins' with THE MOST tempting artwork and printed photos of highland cows. Mum and Dads cakes there were also very yummy (I was annoying and didn't order my own and persuaded them to let me enjoy some of theirs).
Our first official planned stop was Glen Etive which is where the famous Skyfall shot is from - and of course we played the soundtrack along the way.
I got a pretty cool time lapse of our journey all the way down along the road so maybe if you pause it youll find the actual spot as we had difficulty locating it, so who knows if we even went far enough along the road to even find it!
We probably could've done with reading this blog site before we tried:
https://lifeofgibbers.com/2016/04/14/glen-etive-how-to-find-james-bonds-famous-skyfall-location/
After that we went to Clachaig inn whereby in the background was the location of where the set for Hagrid's hut was built
Following the Hagrid theme we then went to the Glen Coe Lochan which was the view from his hut in the Prisoner of Azkaban:
It was a beautifully still lake until Dad decided to wobble it on the landing bays. Some of the reflection along it was AMAZING. It was a lovely little walk which gave us the opportunity to stretch our legs properly after 9 hours of travelling in the car.
From there wee made it to our little camping pod at Glen Nevis camping site which was to be our home for two nights. Dad kindly treated us to dinner and then after Mum went delirious we put her to bed. *delirious from tiredness after she'd been up since 4am, I promise she's not mad... we'll unless you give her too much caffeine*
So that was day one :)
Day Two
Woken up from Dad's snoring; of which he sounded like a bloody steam train!, and Mum's body clock, we got up at 6;30 am when we needn't have gotten up until 8 (NO MUM, I'm still not over it)
After breakfast we pottered round Fort William ton and visited many a souvenir shop and walking shop. From there we caught the train to Glenfinnan and had fantastic views across the viaduct. Dad kept trying to look out for a Flying Ford Anglia. Even though I had been there twice before I have to admit I was geeking out again over it- and it was so much more exciting to go over it and then walk under rather than look at it from afar. Like how cool is this train journey:
So the walk followed near the railway line from Glenfinnan station to the viaduct and then cut down underneath it hurting Mum’s poorly knees on the descent.
We had a little joke at the start of the walk that this was the viaduct
After that we went to Loch Shiel which was just opposite which again was a Harry Potter location. It features as the lake in second task of the Triwizard tournament in the Goblet of Fire.
I did manage to take one of my favourite photos ever her as well. Dad being in two places at once in a panorama “Honestly [...] how can people be in two places at once”. But unfortunately I cant work out how to upload that panoramas on here so you'll have to take my word for it how funny it is.
On the way back we caught site of the Jacobite train going over the viaduct and then just caught it before it left the station.
Once safely returned to Fort William we had some dinner and moved swiftly on to steal falls. On the way there THE BEST thing happened… highland cows! Dad and I attempted to make friends with them across the fence until we got attacked by the midge and ran back to the car. We didn’t walk all the way to the steal falls because the darkness was creeping and the rain was looming and mother’s knees were creaking. Thankfully I had been there before so it wasn’t much of a loss. We still got to explore the lower falls.
I caption this last one "looking for signal in Scotland like...."
Thanks for reading. Its taken longer than I had planned to get this up as wifi has been shockingly bad (and i had a lot of photos to filter through)! Hopefully the next one will be up soon.
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