Actually reached Scotland today. Set off from our lake-district friends house at the ridiculously early time of 11am. He was kind enough to provide a proper fried breakfast. It even included “Bacon flavour enhancing true canadian maple syrup” oooooOOOOOooooohhhhhhh. It was really tasty.
Heading up the motorway; let’s call him Angus <because we are going to Scotland>, was driving the van for the first time. He did well, if a little juddery at the beginning. We found the “Welcome To Scotland” sign and immediately made the Brexit joke about needing our passports soon.
Angus had only been to Scotland once before, and it was only for a piss up – I mean, “educational trip” – during uni, so that didn’t really count. This was also before he was indoctrinated into the climbing fraternity and enjoyed outdoor sports so anything north of Glasgow didn’t hold much appeal. Now, however, he had spent 4 months looking at gorgeous panoramic photos of stunning scenery on our mutual facebook event and was excited to see it in real life.
Scotland did not disappoint. I’ve been here loads so know what to expect, and what you expect is mostly drizzle with some blurry mountains behind. But this was one of the rare occasions we had beautiful sunshine with dappled cloud shade and crisp refreshing air; what an introduction to the country!
We bombed up the A82 into Glen Coe, my favorite road into Scotland. At its most breathtaking, the road spears straight down the centre of a valley with monolithic mountains leering over you as they close in. We stopped briefly in this fantastic landscape and went for a wander down to a river, heather-bashing all the way. The landscape is just so huge that your eyes aren’t wide enough to capture it all, and forget trying to immortalise it with a photo, you just can’t capture it all.
Some sights are only meant to be remembered.
Photographer: Angus Shepherd https://www.instagram.com/angusjshepherd/