Backpacker Buzz

When I asked you guys two months ago about where I should go in Europe, Scotland got some high praise. I figured HI's resident Scot had a hand in that but regardless, it was luckily already on my list. I met my parents there for a bit of travel off the backpacker trail and all the praise it got was well-deserved. Even after nearly two weeks of rain.

From Edinburgh, we headed west via Glasgow to Loch Lomond, up through the highlands via Fort William, past Loch Ness, up to Inverness and then over westwards to the Outer Hebrides, the Isle of Skye, back through Stirling to Edinburgh. We barely skimmed the surface (and completely ignored the east coast), but here are a few things I've picked up about the fiercely proud, and rightfully so, land of Scots.

Lochs and Mountains

Loch is the Scottish way of saying lake and is pronounced by clearing your throat. They're all over the place, often long and skinny. Loch Ness is one of the most famous ones and while we didn't spot any monsters in it, it was nice enough to look at. 

Where there are lakes, there will often be mountains. Towards Fort William, we made our way into the highlands and the spectacular, glacier-carved valleys of Glencoe. All the rain made for some impressive waterfalls. This is the home of Great Britain's highest peak, Ben Nevis, at 1,344 metres. While Fort William acts as the outdoor adventurist's headquarters to the mighty peak, my parents and I decided to enjoy its beauty in another way, with a visit to the Ben Nevis Distillery where whisky is brewed with the mountain's dew. It tastes nothing like Mountain Dew. 

Castles and Other Historical Things

Along Loch Ness, we swung by Urquhart Castle (photo above). You can't come to Scotland without visiting a castle. I'm not saying you shouldn't miss them, I'm pretty sure it's physically impossible to. They're everywhere. But they all have their own story and are in their own state of restoration or disrepair. Urquhart has a pretty nice location overlooking Loch Ness and despite being nearly in ruins, it still has enough left behind to give you an idea of how people lived there. As Canadians, we don't get a lot of physical remnants of history as old as this so coming to grasp the timeline involved takes a bit of mindwork. 

The most significant piece of history we came across was on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides where the Callanish standing stones still stand, like a mini Stonehenge, having been placed there nearly 4,000 years ago. It gives me the same feeling I get when trying to wrap my mind around the concept of the universe, the same feeling I got when I was in Rome seven years ago. Four thousand years is a sliver in the grand scheme of things but nearly unheard of in Canadian history.

We visited other castles in Stirling, the Isle of Skye and north of Inverness. If you can, it's worth taking a tour of the castles to get a crash course in the history involved.

Islands

The Outer Hebrides get a lot of praise for their natural, stark beauty. Despite being a two-hour-and-forty-minute ferry ride from Ullapool on the mainland, Stornaway is a bustling little town on the Isle of Lewis. The Butt of Lewis, at the very top of the isle is well worth more than a few immature chuckles and jokes about how windy it is there. The lighthouse here is out of bounds but the gale-force wind that whips across the steep cliffs will quite literally blow you away. 

The Isle of Harris, to the south of Lewis, gets its own name but appears to be attached to Lewis. More stark and rugged than its neighbour to the north, Harris has a west coast lined with stunning blue beaches, which you'd think were mirages. If you cross your eyes and ignore the rain and howling wind, you can almost start to feel like you're somewhere tropical. Until a sheep walks into your line of vision. 

You can even find coral beaches around here, and farther south on the Isle of Skye, but the prospect of snorkelling is a chilling one. Meanwihle the interior of the island is strewn with equal parts rocky terrain and road-wandering sheep. The single lane roads force you to go slow, not that you'd want to go quickly, but the sheep force you to stop and wait until they decide they'll let you pass. 

We took a shorter (and much calmer) ferry ride to Skye from Harris which has rolling heather-covered hills that end abruptly in high cliffs that jut out of the ocean. 

For a little country that's not really a country (pardon me while I duck), there's a lot going on here and a lot of remote wilderness and farmland that's worth getting out to. If a rental car isn't in the budget, try backpacker bus Haggis Tours to get you oot and aboot.

And with that, I'm off to Paris and into the final month of my round the world travels.