Di and Cam

To make best use of the Easter long weekend, we decided to take to the road and explore the Scottish highlands (in Jodee and Dave’s campervan – the same road trip we had intended to take over New Year).

We left London after work on Wednesday night (thankfully missing a lot of the long weekend traffic) on what eventually became a 1,400mile drive through the ‘highlights’ of Scotland:

The first night was spent at the back of a truck stop/rest station on our way to our first stop, Edinburgh. Although we had visited Edinburgh previously for the Fringe Festival last year, we had missed Edinburgh Castle so made a stop there before heading to a pub on the main strip, The Royal Mile, for ‘re-fueling’:

We parked the van up in a back street by the main rail station and managed to convince the Belushi’s staff (a pub/backpacker chain throughout the UK) to allow us to use their showers in the morning; in exchange for a number of Coronas bought during their Happy Hour that evening!

This was an eventful night as a naughty youth attempted to break into the van (we assume he didn’t realise that we were inside at the time!) but with a lot of shouting he took off down the street and we enjoyed peace and quiet for the rest of the night.

The next morning we took off up the east coast of Scotland, where the weather took a plunge (see below photos of us having lunch at John’s Haven beach in the snow!):

From John’s Haven we headed inland to Dufftown (still with a good deal of snowfall) for a tour of the Glenfiddich distillery:

From Dufftown we headed to Inverness to start the ‘Highlands’ part of the trip. During the drive North we found Dunrobin Castle, which had luckily opened for the tourist season the day before. Here we took a tour through the castle – which is still in use by the Duke’s family – and saw a display by the resident falconer and his beautiful birds:

Next we were off to Ullapool (on the West Coast) where we decided to invest in a campground site and the use of their hot water (showers!). Because it was the off-season, we managed to get our first of three waterside campsites and enjoyed amazing views over the loch.

Being a Saturday night, naturally we headed to the closest pub to find drinks and dinner – scallops and haggis were on the menu and the post-dinner entertainment included four local bands – definitely one of the highlights of our trip!

While we decided that we had run out of time to get to the Isle of Skye (we’ll definitely be heading back there for a long weekend sometime over summer) we decided to head as far south as time allowed and camped overnight at another campsite with a lake view. From here we drove down to Stirling (just west of Glasgow) via Loch Ness, a lovely Easter Sunday roast, a trip on the Falkirk Wheel and, lastly, a few drinks for the girls in the back of the van:

On our way out of Scotland, we decided to spend the last night of the trip at the top of the Lakes District in a wee town called Keswick – again lakeside:

The last day we spent in Windermere and Bowness and making our way back to London (with our superior planning ensuring that we had missed the weekend traffic again!).

Stay tuned for an epic entry of our recent trip to Egypt... a good job for us for the weekend