Tuesday : Sunny, then storms

We woke up to a gorgeous Edinburgh morning. Beautiful blue skies! After a nice breaky we were back on the road, and apparently there isn't a peak hour in Edinburgh either. We were straight through the city and before we knew it driving past Glasgow to out first stop Loch Lamond . Where we were naughty and picked up some Maccas cheeseburgers to have by the loch. Hmm it's been awhile!

Loch Lamond is Scotland's largest loch, the northern end is the beginning of the Scottish highlands, and we could quite easily see those hills. They looked spectacular!

We continued the drive following the loch north then we headed west through more spectacular scenery passing many lochs and mountains. We had another stop a stalker castle an awesomely positioned tower castle on a small island. We were just about to leave, when a huge sea king helicopter came over and maneuvered up really close to the castle. Then somebody jumped out of the chopper. The helicopter then took off and landed on the banks nearby. Not a bad taxi home!

We then headed up to a small village called Glen Coe, where the mountains became much bigger and more rugged. It was the Ben Nevis range and it looked awesome! We couldn't see Ben Nevis the UK's highest peak at 1345m, because it was all covered up by the clouds. We still pulled up by another huge loch to take it all in and soak up some sun.

We weren't staying too far from here, so we made our way up around the range, to Fort William were Ben Nevis if it was clear would tower above. Another record holding visited place today, Fort William has the highest rainfall in the UK, and we were witnessing some of that rain when we went through. It was pumping down!

By the time we got to the hostel (20mins away) it had stopped raining, and was clear. We checked in then had an earlier than usual dinner and went for an evening walk up a hill to a nice lookout with a Chapel and graveyard on top. Been seeing a lot of graveyards lately. We could look back towards Fort William, where we could still see loads of rain coming down.

We went back to the hostel jumped in the car and went for a short drive through the Ben Nevis reserve. You would think that I would of had enough of driving by now, but I just want to see more and more of these highlands, they look fantastic! Amazingly on some of the mountains there was still some snow, even with this so called heat wave that they have had in the last couple weeks. One thing though that we have noticed, is a difference between the Welsh, English and Scottish country towns. Is that so far in Scotland we haven't past through any small pretty medieval towns? Its only been Edinburgh, but we have only be in Scotland for three days. They all looked to have been built within 30-40 years it would seem.

On the stormy drive home we stopped off at a shop and picked up some more supplies to keep us going for a couple more days.