Road Trip

We started out as early as we possibly could, taking the A9 down to Inverness and west from there. However, about five minutes out we ran into a snag in our plans. An accident on the A9(Apparently known as the Road of Death) completely blocked traffic both ways. Now, there's no other road option for travel other than the A9. You literally cannot get anywhere unless you are on the A9, and since there was already a long line of traffic build up it was going to take hours to clear the accident. Our only option was to turn around and take a country road that would loop around and take us out farther up the road, and hope it would come out above the accident.

So we took this little one-lane road through the most beautiful backwoods hill country. It was amazingly bumpy and a lot of fun. The drivers here don't drive: they hurtle. Seriously. The cars are tiny, the roads are small and curvy, but people drive like there's no tomorrow. There are also a lot of one lane roads, so I can understand why there would be frequent accidents.

Anyway, the detour while long, was beautiful.  It's hard to take good pictures through a car window, though, so you'll just have to imagine it.

The object of our quest, Eilean Donan Castle on the western coast of Scotland. The roads from the east coast to the west coast are not what you would call direct, so with the detour the trip took us about 3 1/2 hours one way. Since this is the tourist off-season there aren't many castles open to visitors. Eilean is one of the few that remain open year-round. Unfortunately no photography was allowed inside.

The Marchioness wore Linen to Eilean Donan.

After lunch, the tour, and a quick stop at the gift shop, we drove to the Isle of Skye just to say we'd been there. And on the drive home we passed the famous Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle.

Anyone see Nessie? It was perfect weather for a sighting, and I'm perfectly convinced that Nessie is real.



Obviously, it was getting late by than. We ended the day by eating at a Asian buffet in Inverness, and we still had a two hour drive home after that.