In 2005, I was fortunate to visit Scotland. I had been interested in visiting Scotland for some time. The first *thing* to spark my interest was the movie Highlander. For those who have not seen it, it is a pretty decent movie, and worth watching.
In any case, that movie gave me the desire to visit Scotland. A friend from my days at University called me and said he was going, and asked if I would like to join him. After securing time off from work, and ensuring the finances made sense, I was ready to go. In this post, I will focus one one of my favorite (if not the top) places – Glencoe.
Glencoe is Gaelic for Weeping Valley. The name comes from the very rock formation that makes up the hills in the area. There are grooves all across the range, and when it rains, the valley appears to be crying with the water as tears. The spring water we drank at the hill top was probably the tastiest water I had ever had.
Map Glencoe
The image to the left shows where Glencoe is located in Scotland. It’s roughly a two and a half hour drive from Edinburgh to the general area of Glencoe. Traveling by car in more sparse parts of the UK can be very time consuming when compared to other developed parts of the world. The reason for this is much of Scotland is one lane roads, with pull offs to give room for oncoming traffic to pass. The positive side is Scotland is very scenic, and it makes the ride very enjoyable.
Once we got to Glencoe, we hiked for about an hour up one mountainside to a spring our bus driver knew of. There are TONS of creeks and springs in the area, but this one was readily accessible by foot, and there was a decent footpath to get there. Once we got there, the picture at the right was the view. To give some perspective, our bus was parked at the base of the mountain in the picture. Those groves in the hillside could likely fit a semi-truck in them. If you click on the full size image and see a little tiny yellow speck, that’s our bus. If the speck can’t be seen, just look for the road and that’s where the bus is. We stopped at a place where there was a rather steep drop. The old wives tale I hear when you want to drink directly from a stream or spring is to only drink from moving water, preferable when it is in a free fall. We took water from that area, drank, washed our faces (we worked on a pretty decent sweat during the walk) and began to head back to the bus.
On the way back to the bus, there were a couple good clearings where I could see the range we were in, both up and along the mountainside. The last pictures gives an idea of how the water running down looks, and where the name comes from.
This was probably one of the most relaxing trips of my life. Although we were constantly on the move, Scotland is serene and really put me at rest. There were some loud obnoxious times at certain pubs or when in the large cities (Edinburgh), but one we got to the country side, it was unreal.
For those who are planning a trip to Scotland please note: The train only gets you so far, and you will NEED a car unless you plan on backpacking for a LONG time. If you want to see Scotland in a short period of time, I recommend Radical Travel. They offer packages for England, Scotland, and Wales. They also have different packages depending on the amount of time you can spend in an area. Our trip was the equivalent of the 5 day package (it was 6 days when we went), but we were able to see much of Scotland in a short period of time.
Some general information on the trip:
- Time spent in Scotland: 7 days
- Time spent on tour: 6 days
- Average cost per hostel: $30-40 USD
- Average cost per meal: $8-20 USD
I will expand on other locations in future posts.
Thanks and happy travels.
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