Wednesday, June 08, 2016

Day 3: Glencoe and Loch Ness

my days now end as they begun
with thoughts of you
and I think of you
and think of you
I Think of You - Sixto Rodriguez

Day 3 was spent taking a day tour that features Loch Ness. One of the reason why I chose to stay a few days in Edinburgh was actually for this, to visit Loch Ness. What I did there was most probably confusing for you all, but let's recap this from the beginning. This tour was different from the day before, so the meeting place was different. I found it without any problem. There were many people doing this tour too, but we're divided into smaller groups. The group was smaller from the day before and I kept pretty much to myself.

First stop was to this stop point by a lake or was it a river? I can't remember its name. It's to use the toilet and get some snack. I had the best scone ever there. It was fluffy on the inside and I love it so much. Maybe because it was fresh from the oven hence why it was still fluffy? I don't know. Anyway, the place was so tranquil and we're pretty much the only people there. The water was pretty still that it reflect all the trees and hills. A really really nice peaceful place.

The drive continued to the highlands where things look much different from what I saw the day before. There were more mountains and it was so movie like. By the way, in these 2 tours I took, the guides were actually talking about Scottish history and such, like the clan stories and what Braveheart the movie and Outlander the TV series got right or wrong. I don't watch Outlander and it's been many many years since I watched Braveheart so many of the things mentioned didn't register with me. All I remember is that it was quite interesting :P

Anyway, we entered Glen Coe. Glen is Scottish for valley. So there are mountains and valleys all around. We made a stop to see the Three Sisters which are these 3 peaks of closely grouped mountains(?). I'm sorry I cannot explain it well. This picture below actually only shows 1 of the sister. It was pretty nice here. If you're adventurous and have the time, you can actually take a hike in this area which of course we didn't do.

After that we made our way to Fort Augustus which is a town located by Loch Ness. You can choose to take a boat cruise to explore Loch Ness and see if you can see Nessie. You might think since I wanted to visit Loch Ness, I would do this. I didn't. Why? I gave it much thoughts, but in the end I just didn't want to. In all my trips before for some reason I would actually end up on a boat crossing a body of water. Some by necessity and some for fun. While they were not dreadful, some of them felt quite boring actually so that's why this time I decided to skip it. Sitting or standing on a boat looking at vast amount of water just didn't appeal to me that day. I was breaking with tradition, but I thought it's alright. So what did I do? I went for a walk by the shore. It was actually quite cold and windy by the shore. I heard it's even colder for people on the boat. The guide told us that the water is always cold and that if you drown there, your body will not float because of the cold water. Interesting, yes?

Anyways, as I was walking, a local boy asked me to take his picture. He was holding a piece of paper with birthday written on it. I didn't ask what it's for. It was very stupid of me. I should have asked him. I was sure to get an interesting story. I don't know why, in this trip I just wasn't chatty and didn't feel like talking to strangers. I just can hear my mom say that I am always quiet in social situation like my dad :( People change, but somehow I feel perhaps this time or perhaps it's been happening all this time that I turn back to the shy girl back in my kindergarten or primary school days. I don't know. Anyway, then I also saw something very interesting in Fort Augustus. They have this canal like thingy. I hope it's called a canal anyway let's just say it's like a street filled with water. They have gates that separate the street into different sections and each section has different level / height of water. There was a boat at one part of the section and when they staff wanted to move the boat to a lower section, they had to open the gate so the water from the higher section flowed into the lower section. When they're equal, the staff tugged the boat (if I remember correctly they just pulled the boat with a rope) into the lower section. Then they closed the gate and opened the next gate. It's all very interesting. You will see the boat went down down as the water level leveled up between the sections. There were some ducks there and I wondered if they noticed that something was changing with the water. Maybe they weren't because they weren't shocked or anything.

After that stop in Fort Augustus, we continued on our way. Made a stop to this place overlooking Ben Nevis, which is the highest mountain in Britain. There's a commando statue there overlooking the mountain. If I'm not mistaken it's because they do their training there.

There's also a small memorial for death soldiers. As always, it's a sad one being in places like this. That being said, I think it's a lovely place to go for the family to remember their loved ones.

Last stop was to see a waterfall in Cairngorms National Park. Perhaps this place has many waterfalls, but the one we saw didn't impress me. I'm sorry to say that, really. It's just coming from Indonesia, the ones I have seen back home are tall, so by comparison this felt tiny for me.

We made another stop for tea break in a small village town which I forget the name. It wasn't that interesting. So that's it, that's day 3. For pictures, please go here.

PS: I really need to watch Searching for Sugar Man, a documentary about Sixto Rodriguez. His voice is so distinctly his.

:) eKa @ 5:28:00 PM •