Scotland, Day 3: Coming Home

Luckily, both the Culloden Battlefield and Loch Ness were relatively close to Inverness. We had done the former by 10am and spent the rest of the morning traveling along side the Loch, stopping at random points as well as Castle Urquhart to check out what was ultimately a large patch of water (and no, I wasn't impressed).

The best thing about the Loch was that it led us to Ben Nevis and Glen Coe. Now these were exciting. The area around these places alone made my whole trip up to Scotland. I have photos, but I don't think I quite managed to capture the range and how awesome the scenes were. Unfortunately the cable cars were out (you may have heard about the incident on the news) and I didn't get to climb the peak due to time constraints and who I was with, but that's ok; it just means I'll have to go back one day.

The only thing left on our (or rather, my) list was to visit the Rosslyn Chapel (yes, I hate The Da Vinci Code but I was there so I thought I may as well). We planned on catching the A1 and then M1 home so it was on the way South. Unfortunately we arrived after it had closed, so I didn't get to go in but was lucky enough to have been allowed a peek so that's something.

Alas, it was time to go home. I only really realised then how large Scotland was. It took us hours to get to Edinburgh (despite the stops), and we still had some more to go before hitting the border. We left the Chapel at 7pm and it was a couple of more hours later before we passed into England, and even that was more than an hour away from Middlesbrough (which previously took me around four hours to reach home from).

It was a nice drive though, passing through all the places on the way (there was a suggestion to go see Hadrian's Wall, but we were running well late at that point). It was also quite relieving to be back on flat roads and regular city lights, where even the most remote house had a Sky dish. We slowly ate into the distance and managed to arrive home at around 2am. Seven hours driving? Blimey.

So three days and 1400 miles later we were back. It was a bit more road trip than holiday but it was nice. I wish we had been a bit more efficient, but looking back I think we covered quite an impressive amount in a pretty short amount of time. And, of course, it's not like I'm never gonna go back - especially if my wife comes from Scotland anyway.

EDIT: Pics are now up here, on Picasa.