Stirling is a beautiful medieval city in the northwest of Edinburgh, and home of the Battle of Stirling Bridge where William Wallace (Braveheart‘s main character, just in case you didn’t know) took part, defeating the English army.
Therefore, you can find the William Wallace monument on top of a hill where you can see several battlefields and views till a couple of kilometres away in all directions. The monument shows William Wallace’s life since he was a child till his death, focusing in the battles he won… Quite interesting.
We also slept in a slightly special hostel with a cemetery in the garden… and guess who we found there. (ok, maybe 1926 was a bit too late for him)
The isle of Skye is another must in any route through Scotland. We went there in a day trip from our base camp in Fort Augustus. It was a long day, and lots of kilometre with the car, but still quite nice. The first great spot of the day is the Eilean Donan castle, which is on the way to Skye.
This castle is one of the most photographed spots in Scotland, and of course I contributed to this fact for a couple of times. 😉 This castle is also quite well known thanks to a couple of movies where it appears, like The World Is Not Enough.
And then, of course, the isle of Skye. The weather was not as good as we wished, but we enjoyed nice views. What I liked the most inSkye were the cliffs. Impressive.
Based in Fort Augustus, we did a couple of day trips. One of them was to Loch Affric, yet another lake surrounded by mountains, perfect for some picnic and hiking. 😉 Nice to have a “just nature” day after so many days driving and driving and driving.
And finally, we got to the most famous place in Scotland: the Loch Ness.
You all probably know the reason for that fame is Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster. In the end of 19th century, and early 20th century, many people declared having seen a monster in the lake, media covered that, more and more people saw the monster and finally one of them managed to take a picture of the monster…
Loch Ness Monster
That story has surpassed all borders in the world, and nowadays the area of this lake is one of the most touristic ones in Scotland and they should be thankful to Nessie for a great part of this. By the way, the photo was admitted to be a hoax in 1994 by one of the descendants of the photographer. It is a pity that reality ruins such a nice story. 🙂
This is the only monster we saw...
Anyway, we also established our base in Fort Augustus, in the south edge of the lake for a couple of days, as that location allowed us to do some trip days around that area. The lake itself is just another scottish lake (pretty big, though, as it is 40 km long), but it is aligned with a couple more lochs, which form a natural pass, which has been completed with the Caledonian Canal, allowing ships to sail from North Sea and Atlantic Ocean, without surrounding Great Britain.
Loch Ness at dusk
Urqhart Castle, next to the Loch Ness
