hello from Orkney

 Well I've arrived, Orkney is bloody cold, windy and magnificient!!  I'm driving around in a little red Vauxhall Corsa which was left for me in the airport carpark unlocked with the keys in the glovebox. I think that says it all.

so while I sit in the wonderful drawing room in my hotel, sipping on an 18 year old Viking Pride from the local distillery I'll bring you up to date.

Yesterday I did a Loch Ness cruise and wandered the ruins of Urquhart Castle in bright sunshine, Nessie failed to make an appearance, but I had the company of some very nice people and a beautiful Golden Retriever, see my last post about dogs!!

The scenery is just amazing with the mountains behind and the

 loch shining in the sunlight, I had a terrific time, the commentary on the boat was informative without being intrusive, and the ruins made for an enjoyable ramble.

When we got back I headed to Beauly to visit the Priory and spent an enjoyable couple of hours wandering around.  The village of Beauly is the seat of The Frasers of Lovet and it retains all the charm of a highland village, it reminded me of the Farnborough I left all those years ago.  I had a really nice lunch in The Frasers Arms and then headed back to Inverness via Glen Affric.

Today I boarded the plane for the 40 minute trip to Orkney leaving a warm Inverness and arriving on a cold Orkney at 10:15.

I did a bit of a drive around and then headed into Kirkwell for coffee, after which  I visited The Cathedral of St Magnus which was built in the 12th Century.  Guess what, it's open to the public, take note St Giles!!  It is a truly beautiful Church and I am going to go back tomorrow and walk around the grave yard.  In the church there are tombs dating back to 1500's and the stained glass windows are spectacular.

Then I headed to the highland park distillery for my tour and whisky tasting.  It was a terrific tour and because I was driving, they put the tasting whisky's into little bottles for me to take away.  So very considerate, I'll enjoy them later.

Now some photo's....  Will blog again in a couple of days - I'm heading to the neolithic village of Skara Brae tomorrow.

Inverness Airport

 Well it's 8:30am and I'm waiting for my flight to Kirkwell on Orkney, its another beautiful highland day, the suns up and its burning off the mist and I've taken my scarf off!

The trip from FW to Inverness was uneventful, I did have to stop to let a boat through crossing the Calledonian Canal.  Luckily I was the first car so I managed to get some photos

  

Once the boat went past I continued on to Inverness.

Driving along Loch Ness was frustrating, I just wanted to soak up the scenery, but needed to stay on the road so I had to leave the scenery for when I was walking!!!

Arriving in Inverness I had a few hours to kill before I could check in to Drumdale where I was staying so I decided to take a trip to Culloden.  Now you all know that apart from back in the 60's when I visited fairly regularly,  I have only been back to Culloden once in 2005, on that trip, I could still feel the history and the emotion on the moor, it gave me  goosebumps. Unfortunately this time, there have been so many changes to accommodate the  increased tourism that the moor itself no longer has that aura of mystery about it.  I was talking to a guide and he said that Braveheart doubled the tourist numbers and now Outlander has quadrupled  them.  The information centre is really interesting, but with so any people it's hard to take in the information.

Not quite what I was hoping for.  And the McDonnell of Glen Garry clan stone is no longer there.

 

After Culloden I headed to Clava Cairns for a wander in the quiet and I met some lovely people and a handsome husky who loved pats. I just wish we had the same dog laws as the UK. Dogs are everywhere and welcomed everywhere and they are so calm and well behaved because they do go eveywhere.

My flight will be boarding soon, so I'll leave it there and blog from Orkney, I'm doing a tour of a distillery this afternoon.  Love you all.

Hello from Inverness

 Its 7pm and I'm sitting on the bed in my b&b sipping a glass of South African Chenin Blanc, its still about 24 degrees and the sun is streaming through the windows. I have had a few really good days, met some lovely people and had some deep and meaningful conversations with total strangers!!

So, to bring you up to date, Saturday was a blustery, overcast day in Fort William and I was a little bit foot sore after my mountaineering on Friday, so I rugged up and headed off on a cruise on Loch Linnhe to see the seals and learn a bit about the place.

 Loch Linnhe is a sea loch so its open to the North Sea, its name means  the black Loch, so called because like Loch Ness there is a lot of peat in the water which deflects the sunlight and makes the water dark, its also extremely deep.

As we cruised along the loch, we went past an old fishing boat that had been blown ashore in the hurricane force winds in December 2011, unfortunately the water is too shallow and the  boat too bogged in the sand for it to be salvaged.

 The next point of interest was an ice breaking ship that transports Scottish timber to Sweden and Norway to be made into wood chips and paper and brings back timber for housing and furniture. The owner is a local guy who bought two of these ships when he finished uni. He worked out that transporting timber this way was more sustainable and used only 1/8th of the fuel that trucks were using to do the same job. 

 

From there we looked at a fish farm, it farms Atlantic Salmon and has them table ready in 2 years rather than the 6 years it takes for wild caught salmon.

Then we headed to seal Island, soooo cute, before heading back to FW.

Once back in FW I had a walk around the town centre and found a lifesize bronze statue of a T Model Ford, the statue celebrates Henry Ford's grandsons accent of Ben Nevis in a Model T, it took 5 days!!

Sunday saw me in the car heading to Inverness which I will tell you about tomorrow.

Hello from Fort William

 So the adventure continues, yesterday I left Lockerbie; the plan was to be away by 7am, well the best laid plans and all that... I got out to the car at 6:50am only to find the BNB owners car was parked behind mine and I couldn't get out!!   So I was considerate, I waited until 7am and then rang them and got them out of bed so they could move the bloody car.  I finally left Lockerbie at about 7:30am.

I had a pretty uneventful drive up the motorway, did get a few hold ups going through Glasgow, which was to be expected, but all in all not a bad drive along the motorway.  Then I turned off onto the arterial road leading through the Loch Lomond & Trossachs National Park, the scenery along Loch Lomond is just amazing, the sun was hitting the water and the mist was rising, it was the most incredible sight, and I drove along with Wazzy in the passenger seat, remembering driving along this same road the last time we were in Scotland. Unortunately one can't drive and take photographs so I don't have any photo's to show you, but take my word it was beautiful.

While I was driving and remembering, the Bette Midler song Wind beneath my wings, which was always my song for Wazzy, because he truly did believe in me and let me fly came on spotify,  so I drove along with tears streaming down my face, and then the next song was Glen Fry's You are a part of me and I'm a part of you came on which made me feel a bit better.

As I was feeling a bit fragile I decided to stop for a cuppa, I found a little old  Church with the Rectory attached that had been converted into a tea room about 50 miles from Fort William, so I pulled in and had a cup of tea and an amazing cheese scone, and so fortified continued by journey to FW.

I'm now truly in the highlands having just passed Loch Orchy I'm about 30 miles from Fort William, close to Glencoe so I stopped and took some photos.

I'd forgotten how beautiful, how stark and beautiful it is, there's still patches of snow and the gorse is bright yellow, it's just stunning.

While I was taking these photos I met a lady whose husband has also died, she's solo travelling in her camper van, just before he died, he told her she had to keep the camper                                                                                   van and keep and keep travelling, and that's 

just what she's done, she hales from Derbyshire, but the highlands call to her, just like they do to me, she calls them home. It was lovely to to spend a few minutes talking to her.

So I stopped at Glencoe where on the 13th of February 1692 (just a few years ago) the Campbell's who were loyal to the British throne, having spent 10 odd days enjoying the hospitality of the McDonald Clan, massacred, with the Crowns blessing 40 odd members of the Clan for supposedly not pledging their allegiance to the Crown quickly enough.  Thereby igniting a life long blood feud between the Campbells and the McDonalds.

I spent a couple of hours at Glencoe, I went through the visitors centre and then did the woodland walk which wends its way up through the regrowth forrest.  The scenery is so dramatic, with the scree and the heather and gorse up above and the woodland below.

  

The National Trust of Scotland has built a turf house at Glencoe, it is the same type of home the McDonalds would have been living in at the time of the Glencoe massacre. There are plans to add to this single turf house to show how the Clan community would have been living in 1992.

So back in the car I headed for Fort William and as I had a couple of hours until I could check in to the Lochview Guest House I decided to check out the Caledonian Canal and walk Neptune's steps.  It took 21 years to construct the Caledonian Canal, it's 22 miles of artificial cuttings which connected lochs along the Great Glen to make an inland shipping route between the west and east coasts of Scotland.

The canal was designed by Thomas Telford and construction started in 1799.  The  Government at the tie hoped it would provide employment and stop the migration from the highlands.  Construction took 22 years with the grand opening in 1822.

It is truly an amazing feat of engineering and I was lucky enough to be there when the NSL Challenger was going through.  

Here in the highlands, during the summer months there is no real darkness, daylight hours go from 4am to 10pm with the hours in between known as the gloaming.  Here is a photo taken from my window at about 10:30pm last night,

Today I went walking on Ben Nevis the highest Ben (mountain) in the UK rising to 1345 meters above sea level.  It was a bit overcast and windy, but I was well rugged up with a down vest, jacket and scarf!!

I took the gondola to the beginning of the ski slopes, and then did 2 of the walks, the first Sgurr Finnisg-aig is 663 meters and a 40 minute round trip from the gondola bay.  The one thing I have realised with solo travel, when you go out walking, especially if you're walking the track alone, like  I am today, you need to be very careful, you know what a clutz  I am, 1 banana skin on the Nullarbor and I'll find it, you have to be really careful you don't foul a fetlock when you're on your own and there's no one to help you, and no mobile service!!

For the first time on this trip I'm truly alone, there's no sound, no sound at all but the cry of the wind, no sound of traffic, just the wind.  I'm truly alone and I'm looking around at Ben Nevis, the little villages and then back across to Fort William and all around me its the majesty of the mountain.  Janet, I think you hit the nail on the head when you said you hoped I'd find healing, and I think that's what I'm finding.

Before I headed off on my second walk to Meall Beag which is 630 meters I'm having a coffee in the Snowbird Cafe which is part of the Great Glen Bar which boasts that it's the highest bar in the UK.

 My second walk is an hours round trip and has views along the Great Glen as well as the snow patches further up the mountain.

After I left Ben Nevis I headed to the ruins of Invergarry Castle the ancestral home of the MacDonnell of Glengarry Clan who are Wazzy's clan.  We visited here in 2016 and Lexi visited in 2011 so today I came back wearing Wazzy's MacDonnell of Glengarry cap!!  Again, this was emotional for me, remembering the things we spoke about while we checked out the family mansion!

After I left Invergarry  Castle I headed back to FW, on the way I passed the Commando's Memorial.  All I can say is it tugs the heart strings and I shed a few tears.

Tomorrow will be a quiet day, so far I have walked miles and spent a lot of time reflecting on things. In the words of Robert Frost, I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, so I will blog again from Inverness at the weekend.

Love you all.