Loch Ness and South

 

Best of all was getting to spend time with our Daughter and the Grand Kids. We are going to miss them when we leave, but luckily we still have a few weeks to visit them before then.

Glen Coe 

They headed south and we headed north to drive up along the Lochs and the Caledonian Canal which links the North Sea to the Irish Sea and cuts diagonally across Scotland from Fort William on the West coast to Inverness on the East coast.

This is the real Scottish Highlands and the road wound upwards thru the Trossack Mountains into the Ben Nevis Range, (Ben Nevis being the highest mountain in UK).

The Trossacks

We found some nice places to stay especially the pub stops! In case I didn’t already mention them, some pubs let you stay the night in the parking lot if you buy dinner and drinks in the pub. Seems like a no brainer to us!

The Lade Inn in Callander was really nice!

Lade Inn pub stop

We passed thru Glen Coe, a high pass that drops you down into Fort William on Loch Linnhe. The Caledonian Canal starts here and follows North East up thru Loch Lochy (No there really is a Loch Lochy!), Loch Oich and into Loch Ness before leading into the North Sea in the Moray Firth.

Glen Coe and a turf house.

Its all spectacular scenery spoiled only by the innumerable tourists (like us!).

The Ben Nevis range of mountains

Unfortunately once we reached the top of Loch Ness it was time to start heading south again. We have nights out planned back in Birkenhead and we have only 21/2 weeks to get back, get the rig into storage and find our way back to London for the flight back to Arizona, It seems impossible that we have been here 4 months already.

Nice stop along the Lochs

We took some backroads on the way South, not wanting to retrace our steps from the trip North. We travelled thru the Cairngorm Mountains, past Edinburgh and thru Moffat where we stopped at another outstanding pub stop The Old Stables Inn. Good food and excellent draft beer.

The Old Stables, another great pub stop.

The coming weekend is the August Bank Holiday in England and we ran into heavy traffic on the way south, when we attempted to take the side roads to avoid it we found everyone else had the same idea! After a few wrong turns we rediscovered the small towns and villages of Cheshire which we hadn’t seen since we were kids and came out this way on church and scout outings.

Arrowe Hall in Arrowe Park

Pretty soon we were back at Arrowe Brook Farm, which has become home from home lately, and working out dates for get togethers with friends and family. We got to have the grand kids over for a night and a day, wandering the Wirral looking for Pokemon places. Grandad is now playing Pokemon too!

Grand Kids enjoying making some artwork

Niall's Rainbow, he even mixed some colors for it too.

Then we looked up and it’s September already!