Driving Miss Karen

A blog about our travel

Highlands and Islands

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We are in our favorite landscapes in the world, the highlands of Scotland. For some reason we love the rounded mountains, rainy wind swept slopes, and countless sheep. We seem to be happiest driving on a lonely road in this often dreary landscape. Fortunately, this is the rare instance where Karen and I are in complete agreement. Besides the Cairngorms, we also visited the northwest highlands and took a ferry to the Outer Hebrides (Lewis & Harris).

A perfectly placed sign on a remote road in the Scottish highlands
Karen visited Balmoral Castle, the Queen’s Scottish residence. She usually spends August to October here but that can change because…she is the queen
The castle standing today was built in the mid 1800’s by Queen Victoria though there was a castle here since the 1500s
Our next stop was Ullapool in the northwest highlands. This was our view every morning (we got really lucky with the weather)
We just love the highlands…Deal with it!
Our ferry from Ullapool took us to Stornoway in the outer Hebrides. The inner Hebrides are south and east and surprisingly include the Isle of Skye
Stornoway is a cute little port town like Ullapool where most things revolve around the sea: ferries, fishing, or fossil fuels (oil rigs)
We were supposed to have our car but a flat tire and a booked car ferry squashed that. We mostly used the bus and feet to get around which is much less convenient
Lews Castle is in Stornoway has a museum with some of the famous Lewis Chessmen
The chess pieces were discovered in the western town of Uig on the island. They are Norwegian in origin and carved about 800 years ago out of walrus ivory
Stornoway is a cute little town but not ready for prime time when it comes to Tourism. Foe example, most bus stops are just where the bus stops and do not have any signage or benches
The famous Callanish standing stones are almost 5000 years old
The less famous dog of Callanish is younger and has mad photo-bomb skills
There are nine stone circles but only the biggest three are regularly visited. They are older than the current stones in Stonehenge (but not the site itself) and older than the pyramids

Jose

AKA Alfred

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