The Road to Fort William

In the morning, we had our breakfast and then headed out for Fort William, which is located on the western side of the country, fairly close to the Isle of Skye and the Hebridean Islands. I was surprised that we actually managed to fit more or less our entire planned itinerary in for the day.

We left out fairly early, which was made a bit easier by the fact that the time changed in the UK on Sunday night, and therefore we had hypothetically an extra hour. Really it just meant that the kids woke up about an hour before we would normally expect them to, so we were actually driving down the road by 8:30. Our first stop was at Linlithgow Palace, which we arrived at around 9, before it was open to the public, so we simply wandered the grounds and took a couple of pictures before moving on to Stirling Castle, where we spent a good couple of hours. Stirling Castle is quite similar to Edinburgh Castle - both are ancient, and built on rocky outcroppings overlooking the surrounding area. In the pictures below, you'll be able to see the Wallace Monument, which is only a short distance from Stirling Castle. The views over the countryside were outstanding.

As we headed further north, the scenery became more rugged. The soft heathery hills gave way to craggy mountains, with lochs liberally interspersed throughout. We made a quick stop at Doune Castle, perhaps best known for being in Monty Python's Holy Grail film, and then headed through Callander and drove around the Duke's Pass, where we met Fiona and Finella. Mich had been wanting to see some highland cows, and we had pulled off at one point to take some pictures of the landscape, when we spotted Fiona and Finella. The cows must have been used to visitors, since they came up and kept looking at us and Fiona kept mooing, which made the kids laugh.

After seeing the cows, we meandered further north to Balquhidder (pronounced Balwidder, for those who are interested) and stopped at the grave of Rob Roy. It was getting to be a touch dark at this point (now that the time has changed, the sun is gone by about 5), so we headed into Fort William, where we found our B&B, had a bite to eat, and called it a day.