Today I woke up at 7am, which is way too early, to get ready to go on the 3 day bus tour.

We left at 8am and had the safety instructions given to us by our bus driver Neil in a very funny way, then the 20 of us set off for the Highlands. We drove for aboutan hour and a half before stopping at a little town called Dunkeld to have a look around quickly and have a quick bite to eat/ get supplies for dinner. I just went to an old church that Neil had suggested to go to. There I met some of the other people on the bus, a guy called Scott from Perth, a girl called Kim from Canberra, sisters from WA and a guy called Eldan from Israel. I had a chat to Eldan at the end of going to the church and then we went and had a bite to eat at a cafe before going back to the bus.

We then set off again going further north and then stopping at Ruthven Barracks which was an old English Barracks involved heavily in the Jacobite wars. It was quite cool hearing all the stories of all the hostile history between Scotland and England and actually seeing the places that have been so important in the history of Britain.

The next place we went to, the Culloden Battlefields, was also very influential in this history. It was where the Jacobites were finally defeated by the Kings army. There were flags that outlined where each army lined up which each spread at least 200m across. There were also shrines to soldiers that had played a pivotal role in the battle as well as tributes to soldiers from other countries that had been involved. It was quite a moving and interesting place to see. I walked around with Eldan right along The King's army's front line, and then we continued along what we thought was a path but was actually basically a swamp. So I got my shoes decently wet, so my feet were basically frozen as a result for the rest of the day.

After that we drove through some beautiful countryside and then got to quite a mystical lake known as Loch Ness! It was quite an amazing place and it's quite easy to see why people think there could be some sort of creature in there. Neil said that the lake can get as deep as 800m and is the biggest body of water in mainland Scotland so this is why it's so hard to prove whether the creature is real or not. Neil also told us many stories about the creature and had quite a convincing argument that if God is real so is the Loch Ness Monster. He also said that he'd seen something in the lake a couple of years ago with a bus tour. We stayed by the side of the lake for about 15 minutes, unfortunately there were no sightings though. We then drove round to one end of the Loch to have a look at an old ruinous castle that was quite cool.

We then went to another nice Lake called Loch Cluanie just for a brief stop as well to have a look. We then drove through some beautiful countryside as the sun started to set and then arrived at our final stop for the day before going to the hostel. It was quite a recently rebuilt old castle called Eilean Donan castle. We got there just as the sun was finishing setting and the castle was all flood lit, right on a beautiful lake, surrounded by mountains covered in snow, it was quite amazing.

We then just continued along the road to where we will be staying for the next two nights, in a little fishing village called Kyleakin. There's not really much there other than a bridge that goes across the atlantic and a few pubs. So we all checked in to the hostel, I'm in a room with a guy and a girl from Canada. I just wanted to head straight to the pub that Neil had recommended for a good meal but my shoes were still soaked from earlier. So I tried a few ingenious techniques to try and get them dry including putting a hairdryer inside them while they were under a heater, which worked for about 10 seconds before the hairdryer overheated. But it got them a bit dryer.

So I then went out to the pub with Eldan where we found heaps of the people from the bus tour sitting around a big table, so we just joined them. There were a lot of nice people there and I had a lot of good chats to people. Kim, Scott, the sisters from WA, a couple from the US were already there and were well in to dinner and a beer. So we ordered straight away and grabbed a pint of the local beer, which was actually quite nice. I had a really interesting chat to Eldan about his cumpolsary 3 years in the army as a prison gaurd and then as the warden basically. I think we're really lucky in Australia not to do have anything like that.

But we also had a game of pool on the slantiest pool table I've ever played on. If you put the ball into the cushion on one side, it would bounce off it and then roll straight back in to it again.