into the scottish highlands

We had an aggressive schedule planned for the following day, so we got on the road early. Our first stop was a small town named Elgin, where we'd visit another ruined cathedral. Elgin Cathedral hadn't really been talked up by our guidebook, so we were pleasantly surprised to find a good sized cathedral to see.





Once again, we climbed up as high as we could go to get views of the surrounding area.







Amazing that my knees survived all these cathedral and castle hikes.

The weather was really nice, so that made the visit a lot better. Added bonus: a Pictish symbol stone was placed inside the cathedral at some point in its history, so we got to see another of those.















The symbol stone:






All in all, much better and more interesting than expected, and worth seeing if you're in the area.

Our next stop would be Cawdor Castle. This particular castle had been talked up quite a bit by the guidebook, but I liked it less than the two we had seen the day before. That's not to say it was bad, however.



The castle's gardens were nice, and the weather was still in our favor.











One of the stranger things we saw on this trip was the stream that ran through the grounds. I've never seen any body of water colored like this:



The symbol of Scotland, the thistle:


After we were done at Cawdor, we got on the road again and headed toward Loch Ness. It was around this time that the terrain started to become more mountainous. It ended up being my favorite part of Scotland, and probably the coolest area we drove through the whole trip.

We had booked a cruise on Loch Ness. It was fairly overcast, but it didn't rain, fortunately. Loch Ness is much larger than I had expected, so we didn't even cover that much of it.









Urquhart Castle, on the shores of Loch Ness:










We didn't see any monsters, but we had a good time and that was good enough for us.

We continued driving into the highlands, and the terrain became more and more mountainous, while also becoming more desolate and less lush (but still green).







The area had a bit of a Lord of the Rings vibe to it, and I liked that.

Our final stop of the day was Eilean Donan, which wasn't terribly impressive on the inside, but which had the best scenery around it of all the castles we saw on this trip.







We would spend that night at a bed & breakfast in the adjacent town, Dornie. The place we stayed is in one of the buildings to the right:



Dornie is a really small town, possibly the smallest I've ever stayed in. Our accommodations were small but nice enough. The plan had originally been to stay close to the castle so that I could do some night photography, but that ended up not happening. I fell asleep early, and when Becca woke me up around 10:30pm, it was still light outside, so I bagged the idea. Bummer--night photos of Eilean Donan would have been great.

Anyway, back to Dornie's size. Being a small town, Dornie only had two places to eat: a hotel restaurant and a pub. We decided to eat in the pub, which had a fairly lively vibe despite its location. We had a decent meal of lamb and some other stuff, and were even chatted up by a Scottish tourist who noticed me using my iPad and wanted to talk about the awesomeness of said device. Anyway, that was about it for our day. A really great day, overall.