Nat & Ben Do Europe: Into the Highlands and Ireland

30th August - Abelour, Scotland

It was time to head to Abelour via the whisky trail which was also just after the Victorian heritage trail. We stopped at the Glenfiddich Distillery for a tour. Out tour guide was great and very enthusiastic about the whole whisky making process. By the end of the tour she had both Nat and I convinced that whisky was a fine, smooth drop.

Huntly Castle (on the way to the Distillery)

The whisky is still "duty free" until they bottle it due to the evaporation loss they have over the 12 years till bottling.

Interesting for us (as we had no idea how it was made) they only need three ingredients: barley, water and yeast. All the sugars are extracted from the barley through a heating and filtration process. The yeast added for the fermentation to begin and then put into the barrels. The interesting thing which we didn’t realise is all the flavours and colour of the whisky are determined from the barrels. These guys use previous bourbon barrels from the States and/or cherry barrels. Sometimes they keep the whisky in the bourbon barrel for 12 years and then swap it into the cherry barrel for the last 6 months or so. Anywho, interesting to hear the different techniques.

It has to be barrelled for a minimum of 3 years in Scotland to be called Scotch whisky.

So off we went at the end of the tour with the thought that the whisky was going to be smooth after the tour guides enthusiastic speech… mmmmm not really. You still have to love the stuff to appreciate it I guess. Although, the older the whisky the better it was, we tasted 12 years (youngest they do), 15, 18 and 21 years. Nats words “when we got to the tasting it was still gross. I think I burnt out some nose hairs just by sniffing some of it.”

They say to add water until it doesn’t burn when you drink it, we didn’t have a big enough glass. I guess we are not whisky drinkers just yet.

31st August to 1st September - Inverness, Scotland

We left Aberlour via Glen Grant distillery for another tour and again in Nats words “more gross tastings”. We did another tour with similar aspects to the one yesterday and tried some more whisky, hard stuff for 12:30pm.

We arrived at the caravan park just outside of Inverness. It was extremely windy here with the whole camper shaking.

I checked out the Culloden battlefield which was the last battle to be fought on British soil. There was an uprising by the Jacobites against the Government. (House of Stuart trying to overthrow the House of Hanover). The Jocobites were undefeated until this battle.

Feature wall with every protruding piece of stone representing lives lost

They had blue and red flags to show where they stood in battle

They had an exhibition centre with a small room that projected a re-enactment of the battle on all four walls, it felt like you were right in the middle, really cool.

2nd September - Morvich, Scotland (near Isle of Skye)

Drove down Loch Ness to Drumnalochie castle. I didn’t realise but Loch Ness is the biggest lake in Scotland, by volume, and equates to all the lakes in England and Wales combined, it’s also 230m deep. No siting of the monster, just something in the passenger seat…….

The roads were very tight and winding which again is not well received. We then continued on to the west coast towards Isle of Skye. The landscape drastically changed to rugged mountains, streams and small waterfalls everywhere. Very beautiful and totally unexpected. We stopped off at Morvich caravan park for the night before going to Skye.

Even though it was misty with low lying dark cloud it was a nice setting and not too cold. Nat cleaned BB and rewarded herself with some of the scones we had left, I hope by now she has had her scone fix, but for some reason I don't think that's the case yet.

3rd to 4th September - Portree, Isle of Skye

Left Morvich for Isle of Skye, unfortunately the weather was terrible. Overcast, foggy, constant rain, and couldn’t really see any of the scenery. We decided to stop in Portree for a couple of days and hopefully continue the drive with the sun out. (a very good decision in the end)

We walked into the town and rewarded ourselves with a few beers in a very simple pub, just so happened to be playing “Bens music” so we stayed a little longer. We walked down to the harbour where we had some hot chips and ventured back up to the town square to another pub which was just for a couple but ended up being for the rest of the night.

Nat ordered a house red which ended up being about 300ml in one glass, needless to say “red wine” Nat with rosy cheeks came out for the night. We ended up having dinner there and tried our first Haggis meal with neeps and tatties. It was a starter which wasn’t actually too bad. I think it was mixed with a lot of herbs and spices but you could taste the "odd" meat flavour occasionally.

After dinner they had a band on, just a simple drum and two accordions. I think it might have been true Scottish style band but without the bagpipes. However they did have bagpipes out in the street for a bit which was pretty cool.

Then we walked back up the hill to BB, well we actually speed walked, very funny, I believe Nat may have won but I was carrying an extra 4 litres of beer. Next day the weather was still atrocious so we stayed in all day and watched whatever was on the box. We actually watched Breakfast At Tiffany's - first time for both of us. Was kind of weird, can’t work out if she was a pro or not. She was pretty annoying actually and I wished the taxi pissed off with her in it at the end.

5th September - Dunvegan Stopover (forced stopover!)

The sun finally came out so we started our trek around 9.30ish. Through to the top of Isle of Skye, past old man storr, Uig and into Dunvegan. The road was mostly single lane with passing points, got very dodgy is some spots but the scenery was definitely worth it.

Narrow road for most of the trip

We made it into Dunvegan and thought we'd head to the castle to stop for lunch. Unfortunately we didn’t make it that far as the back right tyre completely blew out on us. By completely I mean off the rim, unrepairable and totally f*&#@d. Lucky for us we didn’t have a spare, the discussion “we really should by a spare tyre” we had a few weeks ago is useless unless you actually buy the bloody thing!!

So I stayed with the camper explaining the situation to everyone who stopped, who were mainly German because of the license plates, while Natty road into town on the bike to find a garage. The road we were on didn’t have any emergency lane or a spot where we could crawl off the road, so there we were on the road with the hazards lights on while buses and semi’s drove around us, luckily there was enough room for a single lane.

Neither the garage here or in Portree had the replacements so we were stuck on the road until the morning when the tyre was due in. We couldn’t get a tow to a safer place because we too long. We were only about 200m away from a parking spot but we couldn’t make it there without causing damage to the rim so it was a road stop for us tonight.

The view for the night...

Our campsite for the night

So a nice sunny day ruined but we made the most of it by setting up our chairs on the side of the road and had a few beers.

It was a very nervous night considering we could see the oncoming headlights beaming into our camper every time someone drove by. We just wanted it to be morning and light so we weren’t such a hazard. We placed a reflective vest on the right mirror and kept the hazard lights on for most of the night. A few people stopped throughout the night but they couldn't help us. We didn’t get much sleep that night….

6th to 7th September - Onich, (just below Fort William)

Can you believe they had the tyre in and were with us by 9am to fix it, because its not Abu Dhabi!! We got out of there by about 10am and continued the drive off Skye and all the way through to our Caravan club site in Onich. Again awesome scenery and we were lucky to see some of the sights that we missed out the other day due to the weather as we essentially did a big loop.

We continued on to Onich which was a really beautiful caravan site, overlooking the lake with mountains behind it. We were rewarded with an awesome sunset that night.

The Next day we fixed the leak that we noticed in BB, to the best of our abilities, by filling it with silicon, a lot of silicon. Then off for a walk on some of the nearby trails.

Our camp site

8th September – Oban

Before we headed to Oban for the night we decided to take a trip on the Jocobite steam train to Malaig and back from Fort William, it is stated that it was voted the best train route in the world. It was pretty good although not sure how it would compare to the one through the Rockies.

In any case we enjoyed it, got some coal in our hair, face and eyes while leaning out the window to take photos. On the way there "the little train that could" actually ran out of steam, literally, whilst trying to climb. We stopped in Malaig for lunch and then travelled back.

9th to 10th September - Balloch (on Loch Lamond, Scotland)

Drove down to Oban in the morning to check it out and it was stunning. Small harbour town with amazing views to the nearby islands. It was made even better from the stunning weather we had. Blue skies with some beautiful white fluffy clouds. Really nice.

Then continued driving into Loch Lamond national park and down the loch to Balloch. Again, we were greeted with stunning scenery which reminded us of Canada. Mountains with trees and large lakes. Only down side was the damn tiny roads again.

We checked into Loch Lamond woods touring park, which is just around the corner from Macca’s and walking distance to town.

11th September - Stirling, Scotland (FREEEEEEEDOOOMMMM!!)

We drove into the caravan park to secure our park and then drove into Stirling to check out the town.

Caught the park and ride in, walked around the old town to the castle and then down again to the main shopping street. We headed back to BB in the bus and then checked out the William Wallace memorial. We walked up to the memorial, I went in and Nat headed back to BB. The Memorial is close to Stirling Bridge which is where Mr Wallace, outnumbered, defeated the English and is one of the well-known battles.

I could take him...

Due to the size of the sword, they reckon he would need to be 2m tall...

Views from the monument

The Monument

Old Stirling Bridge

12th to 14th September – Glasgow

We left Stirling for Glasgow via the Falkirk Wheel which was pretty cool, it’s like a Ferris wheel for boats between the two canals. It lifts boats about 35m up to the next canal which replaced the 8 locks that were once required.

View from the top canal

Ben playing on kid stuff

Continued on to Glasgow where it kept raining so we stayed home and sorted out laundry etc before meeting up with our friend Billy the next day.

We packed our overnight bag and caught the bus into town to catch up with Billy. We went for teppanyaki dinner after polishing off a bag of Doritos and about 5 beers. Then went to a bar in an old building with a modern interior but keeping the old school cornices and ceiling finishes.

We saw a few Glasgow slags and immediately felt for our single friend Billy. All in all a good night although with my carb overload I was done by about 1:30am. The next day we walked around town some more, had dinner at a Thai restaurant followed by a pub with live music. Had a good laugh with Billy who was a great host for out short visit.

15th September - Coleraine, Northern Ireland

After arriving back to BB around 1am we got up at 7am to make it to the ferry

at Cairnryan. We made it in good time considering the shocking weather. Foggy and nonstop rain plus really strong winds. The water was soooo choppy, well for Nat anyway who spent most of the trip in the foetal position. The pressure point bands did not work and when she went to the toilet feeling like she had to vomit she managed to keep it in despite someone next door not having so much luck.

When we arrived the sun was out and we continued the drive to Coleraine towards the Giants Causeway. The weather was crazy here with super strong winds, rain, hail and sun.

16th September - Ballyshannon, Ireland

We made a slow start after doing some food shopping. We checked out the Giants Causeway, again, raining with major winds. The Causeway was pretty cool, a geologists playground (thinking of my mate Kane).