We began our trip to Scotland after two full weeks rest and a weekend spending family time in the Lakes with Aaron's Sister and Dad. We drove almost all day until we reached Loch Lomond in the Trossachs, where we finally parked up for the night.
Our first day was spent in a way I would have never imagined!!
It had been raining snowing and howling gale force winds from the moment we drove into this wondrous country… and it had not let up.
Aaron, determined not to let the weather get the better of us, decided we would climb the highest mountain in The Trossachs. Ben Lomond. It snowed on the mountains all night and rained most of the morning while we ate our breakfast and readied ourselves. We got a break in the weather, the sky turned blue and the rain stopped, this was our break, we thought we'd start climbing now and we'd make it to the top before it started to rain again… an hour up and the rain started to drizzle again, never mind that, Aaron was not letting the weather beat us, he pushed me on and on and I sulked as my legs hurt and body ached, I've put weight on you see…you might remember me telling you in my first blogs that I needed to stop eating so much chocolate, well I didn't stop. We were climbing straight up hill and into the snow. The higher we got the more the snow. We seen some dark cloud coming through the valley and we could no longer see the top of the mountain, we clipped our grips onto our boots so we wouldn't slip on the snow and ice, Aaron took my hand and we started to hurry towards the top of the mountain, we were on a great big long wide exposed part of the mountain when a HUGE blizzard/snow storm came in. We put our heads down and walked into it, holding on tight with my eyes squinted so hard I could hardly see we pushed on, about 200m ahead was a few big rocks we could take shelter by. The snow was pelting our faces and the wind was so strong, my face was stinging and I actually felt a little bit scared, and annoyed at Aaron for thinking he was such a hero trying to beat the weather. When we finally reached the rock and we were huddled in together keeping warm and out of the wild wind and snow I remembered why I appreciate Az so much, he challenges me, and pushes me further than I would push myself, if it weren't for him I wouldn't have done half the things I have. We were so close to the top but I wasn't up for it, the storm was getting worse and I was afraid of a white out so we grabbed ourselves and almost ran down the mountain. Talk about adventure, and as for experience? That one was an experience of a lifetime!! Day one in Scotland.
Next up was Mt Ben A'an, a smaller mountain but just as beautiful view stunning surrounding views. Only 590m we made it up in an hour and the views were like I said, just stunning! on the left of us we had massive mountains, the tops covered in snow, in front of us we had a gorgeous lake shaped like a squiggly fat line with mountains at the top of it and to the right of us more snow capped mountains, it was breath taking. The sun was out, we had our t-shirts on and we were surrounded by beautiful scenery.
We moved on and drove to another little town where there was supposed to be a big beautiful waterfall, called The Falls of Falloch. It had started to drizzle, the sky was grey and miserable but undefeated (so far) we decided we would go out in search for this waterfall anyway, it was 10km round trip, so not too bad. Of we set. Through the paddocks and along these muddy swampy tracks that are every where in Scotland, passing the highland cattle and there cute hairy calfs (pretty scary actually those beasts are massive and i do not want to get in-between a mum and its baby!) we walked ad walked and walked, I checked my walking app on my phone and we had come up to 6km already, I was complaining that we'd walked too far and we must have passed a turn off somewhere but Aaron was determined we hadn't. Aaron was asking passing travellers who were walking the West Highland Way and they were useless saying they had passed lots of waterfalls and didn't really know, each person saying yeah 10 minutes down there, its funny how 10minutes turned into 40 minutes!! Coming through a really mucky muddy awful track with the rain starting to hit a little bit harder, Aaron was getting wet feet and was not happy about it, determined to miss the cow pats in front of us he went off track, a few dry hard steps he carried on until he hit swampy grass he leaped from it only it was getting worse, more swampy until he started to sink!!! He took one last leap for safety and jumped straight into a very deep mucky smelly awful swamp, knee deep and sinking he fell forward, slow-motion and he was stuck in the mud, he put his hands out to 'save' himself and his hands went in!! So there I am on the track laughing so hard I could have died, and there was Aaron knee and elbow deep in this swamp he had tried to saved himself from, but actually just jumped into, he stood up with a frown on his face and two giant steps out mumbling don't touch me I don't need help he made it back onto dry land. I was still laughing tears rolling down my cheeks following Aaron who was marching through the cow pats he desperately tried to dodge, covered in swampy muddy muck smelling like….swampy muddy muck! He found himself a creek and washed himself off in the freezing cold water mumbling away, and we decided to head back to the van, as it was starting to rain more heavily and Aaron was, despite his attempts at cleaning himself, still very mucky we headed to the motorway where we would attempt to hitchhike for the first time. It proved easy enough as a car had broken down and a tow man was there who happily gave us a ride into town. All that and no waterfall, still I seen something just as beautiful that day!! HAHA!!
Few days on and the sun was starting to come out to play! Time for another mountain. Beinn Resipole. I want to be sick at the thought of this mountain.
We pulled up at a stunning little lake, no town, no signal, just a small Camp site, a lake and mountains. We pulled up just down from the camper van site on the side of the road and slept for the night. In the morning we woke up to the most beautiful sky and the lake was flat, glassy, like a mirror, we had our breakfast, enjoyed the view and decided to get started on this mountain. Let me just say we have climbed at LEAST 10 mountains in the last month. So off we set, behind the campsite the track started, easy to start a slight slope through the farm lands and up towards the mountain, we were quite high and we stopped and I said to Aaron after about and hour of walking, "I reckon we must be about half way now" smiling, naive as to what was to come, I felt pretty good and positive about this mountain.
4 hours after tramping through swampy wet mossy grass mixed with intense rocky slopes, soaking wet with sweat, not smiling or happy i only just managed to DRAG myself up this beastly mountain. I sat down on the summit, no I don't want a photo, I tried to breath for half an hour before I could even think about making a decent down that thing!! 7 long sweaty awful hours and 17km later we grabbed a well deserved shower at the campsite and cooked our dinner. At only 950m high we did not think that mountain would be hard at all, but it was, and is the worst, and hardest mountain we have climbed to date.
Not even wanting to think about climbing another mountain we headed to the coast for a beach day. The sun was shinning and our rough guide told us that Sanna Bay was a teal treasure so we decided to check it out. Not wrong that rough guide. It never is!! Basking sharks can be spotted at this bay, unfortunately for us its not the season they are around but the bay was beautiful, white white sand, and tropical coloured waters we were speechless. I though this kind of water and sand was only found at places like Asia, Bali, Aussie but no!! Scotland has more to offer than most people realise! What a treat!
Time for some history, we headed to Castle Tioram. Its a ruined castle that sits on an island that is serrated from the mainland at high tide. It belonged to a Clan called 'Clan MacDonald of Clan Ranald' it was seized by the government in 1715 and torched after the chief of the Clan joined the 'Jacobite Court' in France after swearing allegiance to the British Crown. The castle has been unoccupied since!! A nice spot for some tea and a walk before we picked up a hitchhiker and dropped him off to his car.
We decided to head off the mainland and onto the Isle of Skye.
The Isle of Skye is such an amazing island filled with real pretty spots!! The second day here we climbed another mountain. It was really hard and seemed to go on and on for agrees! but so worth it at the top with stunning 360 views of the Black Cullin mountain range and the Red Cullin mountain range. We followed this venture down to Sparr Cave. Down some beautiful cliffs to the ocean, this cave is only reachable when the tide is low. So we made our way down and tried to find the cave. Aaron's directions said we needed to go around the cliff edge and it would be difficult to walk, and if we fell, we would fall into the ocean, so we seen our next challenge. It was beyond me how we were even supposed to get around this thing, it was almost vertical and yes there was a lot of water below me, but if the cave was on the other side, we were going around. So with a hard beating heart and shaking hands and feet we made our way around the cliff holding onto only tiny pieces of rock sticking out. We made it! ahhhh and there were the caves! Two of them even. The directions said the one on the left was the right one, so we went in, only to find it was merely 4m deep, so out we went again and looked at the cave on the right. It was very tall and skinny and there was a hella lot of bird poo in the entrance, so much I was afraid of slipping on it. We were discussing that it look untouched and were unsure we were at the right place but decided to push on ahead anyway, half way into this strange cave we stepped over a pigeons nest, on the ground was three pretty little eggs, when BAM this pigeon comes from no where! Its a good few metres in front of us and above us, but is in such a massive panic its hitting the walls as it tries to fly out and away from us, there is feathers everywhere and that bird is getting awfully low, we ducked down, and it just missed us as it got out of the cave. Aaron, terrified of birds anyway, turned and ran, we boosted it out of this creepy little cave and back to face the dangerous cliffs again. We went back the way we came, along the cliff and sure enough there was Sparr Cave, we had walked straight past it and a couple of guys asked us why we went around the corner….because we like adventure? So, we found the cave, it was so big and beautiful and dramatic on the inside. It looked very similar to the lime stone caves we get in NZ but instead of being slippery, and made from limestone, its made from Sparr, and while it looks like you'd fall over if you walked on it, it was quite the opposite, it was grippy, like sand paper. We walked straight uphill which was a weird feeling because I kept thinking I was going to fall and on the other side was a great big lagoon. Crystal clear water, only the sound of dripping water, in pitch black darkness, with just a small head torch, the feels were amazing. I got goosebumps. I love mother nature :)
Out we went and as we neared the water a pod of dolphins swam past. I tell yah, that did it for me. I needed to sit down on the rock and just enjoy what I was feeling. Surrounded by massive cliffs towering heights above us, the ocean crashing gently on the rocks I was lying on, with a deep cave into darkness with only small sounds of dripping water and the life of small bugs we probably don't know exist, while dolphins roams the ocean, free! What great feeling.
The next day took us up to The Old Man of Storr. The Old Man of Storr is out of this world beautiful. It is a series of rocks, the remnants of ancient landslips. In fact most of the hills and weirdly shaped rocks here are the remnants of accent landslips, I thought that was pretty cool. We spent a few good hours in the van in the morning playing cards waiting for the bad weather to pass over, as soon as we got a break we boosted it up the track and seen it all for ourselves. The only bad thing about The Old Man of Storr is the lack of signs letting people know that there are better routes and tracks so you can see the rocks from different points of views. We found a great website that gives out step for step instructions for invisible paths so you can see these stunning places from all angles possible. We walked up to the rocks, then up the mountain behind it and seen it from view points, the view of the rocks with the beach behind it was just amazing! We carried on to the top of the mountain and j ust as we were nearing the peak of Mt Storr a massive dark cloud came blowing in, Aaron was about 20m in front of me and he completely disappeared, the wind was immense, it was so cold, i was a bit worried about being blown off the edge, I crouched down and after a few minutes it blew over and Aaron was back in sight. We ran for the very peak took a photograph and sprinted down the other side, it was so steep and once I was running there was no stopping, I thought a few times in between thrill screams and trying to breath that if I don't slow down I might just fall! I kept running, I nearly changed my name to Forest but the hill came to an end and a surreal view came into point. After some admiration we finally made our decent down the rest of the mountain and back to the van.
The Isle of Skye was proving to be very nice indeed and we had quite a few things left to do before we left, so straight in the van and off to Kilt Rock, a big beautiful waterfall flowing off the cliff and crashing into the ocean. Its a sight for sore eyes and I would recommend visiting it for sure!!
After the waterfall had filled our every desire, we bombed off to see the dinosaur footprints at Staffin Beach. We could see the area they were supposed to be in but after a long disappointing look, we left the ancient roaming footprints behind and carried on to find a nice spot to sleep.
The following few days we explored Faerie Glen which is a series of little hills caused by small land slips through out the years, we spent an afternoon spotting and playing with seals at coral beach and we even went hunting for the golden eagle in the eerie parts of the Isle of Skye. Neist Point was beyond words, gorgeous!! It was reallllly windy and it was cold but we sat on the cliff edge and watched the birds swooping over the ocean, keeping an eye out for the secretive golden eagle. The sun went down, the waves smashed the bottom of the cliff, it was really nice. We need moments like these in our lives, where we can just really appreciate nature at its best, its good for the soul, calming and realxing. No Golden Eagle but feeling good spirited we headed up to the van for bed.
Sunset at Neist Point
Time to leave the Isle of Skye.
Scotland is massive, and there is so much to do. We drove up the highlands we stopped and walked tracks, we climbed mountains and we experienced a whole new level of mother nature. We drove to East Scotland, made our way down and back to Fort William where we climbed Ben Nevis.
The information lady told us we would need at least 7 hours to get up and down again, 4 up 3 down. The night before we were set to climb the biggest mountain in the british isles, I was pooing myself. Honestly I was so worried, I can climb mountains, I'm good at it sometimes, but I'm not that fit, my legs kill me so I was worried about holding Aaron up and taking more like 9 hours! I spent a large part of the night convincing myself would be fine, I prepared myself mentally for the next day and fell into a deep slumber. We woke up at 7am feeling fresh, without an alarm too so thats always a bonus! The sun was out, it was a little bit nippy but not too cold, we got up and got ready in record breaking time, ate our food, packed our lunches put on our shoes, and just across the road was Ben Nevis. Waiting for me. I took almost all of my clothes off in the first 5 minutes. It was hot. Our first hour of the hike was straight up the mountain, it was hard going, a few times I said to Aaron in short breaths that I wanted to stop, every time he came back with this "Don't think about your breathing, just look where your putting your foot, don't worry about rushing either, slow and steady wins the race" so I repeated this in my head, and all of a sudden climbing this beast got easier. We were overtaking people and i was realising it, I was just concentrating on where my feet were going, we were chatting away and Aaron pointed out the half way mark, just up the path from us!! Half way already! and I hadn't even stopped for a break, all of a sudden I had this energy run straight though me, I looked behind me and vowed I wouldn't let anyone pass me and I would only stop once and that would be for lunch. We reached the half way mark sat down and gave ourselves 10minutes for lunch. The next half of the mountain went really quickly, it wasn't long before we reached the snow, and when we did the track disappeared, we joined a couple from Cornwell, England. They had a smart compass thing that told them where the track was so we knew where to walk without falling down some hidden crevasse, we followed them to the top and when we seen the peak we left them behind to the there photos and chat. Once we made the top we sat up there for nearly and hour and chilled out, it wasn't too cold, the sun was out and the vibes Iwas feeling were too amazing to pass up. I wanted to just live up there, I can't even describe the views we had of the surrounding mountains and lakes. Just too good. All together including our lunch break it took us 2 and a half hours. and it took us 2 to get back down. What an absolutely amazing day! I would do it again, over and over.
The rest of our time in Scotland was sent driving around and seeing the last little pieces we hadn't seen, we spent a week in Edinburgh enjoying the old town more than the new.
And then that was it.
A few weeks in England to sell our van and spend time with Aarons Family before departing for Europe on our tour with topdeck.
Travelling the UK has been so much more than I ever expected it to be, and I definitely think all British travellers should do what we did. It'll open up your eyes to how beautiful your country actually is.
No comments:
Post a Comment