After hearing so many wonderful things about the Scottish Highlands we thought we would head up for a long weekend around our birthdays. We flew into Inverness where we picked up our rental car and started driving down the Great Glen to Fort William. We stopped by the Loch Ness visitor centre to find out a bit more about Nessie and then stopped at Urquhart Castle right on the endge of the loch and had an explore. We arrived in Fort William to stay the night and try some black pudding and sample the local ales. The next day we headed out for a walk around Glen Nevis. The track was extremely muddy and we now know what bog factor 3 is! Luckily Darin had gumboots on but Ellen wasn't so lucky, her tramping shoes weren't quite as good. We got some amazing views though of snow covered mountains and golden trees and hills. After our walk it was time to head to Mallaig where we caught the ferry to the Isle of Skye. Being so far north it got dark pretty early and by the time we arrived in Portree at around 5pm it was pitch black. We had an amazing little attached cottage in Portree with a gorgeous free standing bath in the bedroom so cooked up some dinner and chilled out in the cottage before realising that it was starting to snow outside! The next day (Ellen's birthday) we thought we would drive around the northern part of Skye. We stopped at the Old Man of Storr - a obscure rock formation and went for a little walk. The walk however was a bit further than we thought and with all the snow, mud and water everywhere we weren't quite prepared for it. We headed back to the car though and carried on around the coast stopped at Lealt Falls, Kilt Rock and Mealt falls. We carried onto Dunvegan where we were planning on visiting the castle but unfortunately being the off-season it was closed. So we drove onto Neist Point which is the most western part of Skye. We visited the lighthouse there which sits out on an amazing cliff edge with gorgeous views. We saw the sun begin to set and then headed back to Portree for dinner. Again because it was the off-season, everything was closed so we couldn't even find a nice place for dinner on Ellen's birthday. We therefore decided to get some food and wine from the supermarket and hang out in the cottage again for the night. The next day we packed up our gear and drove down to Loch Silgachan where we had some nice views of the Cullin Hills. We then crossed over from Skye back onto the mainland and drove to a quaint little seaside village called Plockton. We had some amazing seafood here for lunch before driving back to Inverness. We walked around Inverness a little bit before we went to our amazing little B n B which was an 1830s house complete with fireplace, grand piano and grand staircase. Being Guy Fawkes/Bonfire night we headed to the Inverness display which was really impressive. We then found a substitute birthday dinner restaurant for Ellen seeing we couldn't find one last night. We found a nice place and had some beer tasting platters, some food and even a wee dram of whiskey. We then headed home and packed our gear so we were ready to head back to London the next day.