Went to Scotland again the other week, because that's what October half term is for. It was a week with nowhere near enough kayaking - but we did do a load of "cultural" stuff instead, so...

Castles

We visited Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness, and Inverlochy Castle just outside Fort William.

At Urquhart, the car park is sort of on the roof of the visitor centre.  You go downstairs and watch a film about the history of the castle.  I assumed it was in ruins due to general fighting, but it turns out they deliberately blew it up so no-one else could have it.

When the film ends they draw back the curtains to give you your first view of the castle.  Impressive enough - but it happened to have a lovely rainbow over it. Needless to say I rushed to take photos!

Inverlochy Castle has no visitor centre or entrance fee.  It's smaller and a lot more intact - roughly square with a big round tower on each corner.

Museums

The Highland Museum in Fort William has so much stuff crammed into a relatively small space, including all along the corridors between rooms.  Fairly sure I missed huge amounts just by other people blocking the way!

Glencoe visitor centre was a bit more my thing - more natural history, with a film explaining how the area was formed by volcanoes and glaciers.

Unsurprisingly there was also a lot of stuff about the massacre.  History isn't one of my strong points, so I didn't know much about it other than at some point in the past a load of people got killed.  Now I am much more informed, and have at least a vague idea what a "Jacobite" is..

Glencoe also has rivers and waterfalls, and I had a new neutral density filter to play with.  Here's the best of the week's attempts at blurry water photos.

Five seconds after I finished taking photos a massive hailstorm appeared out of nowhere and we got soaked running back to the car.  Thanks, Scotland!

tags: Scotland