On our last day on the Isle of Skye, we headed over to a place called the Fairy Pools. Many of the roads on Skye (and all around Scotland for that matter) are single lane roads. They contain small areas called Passing Points every few hundred metres where cars need to pull over to let traffic through coming the other way. A lot of the roads leading to the Fairy Pools were like this.

We arrived at the car park and put on our scarves and jackets. It was freezing cold, although there was no rain, which we were thankful for. The Fairy Pools is a hiking trail along a valley surrounded by green hills (are there any other kind here?) where a creek cuts through the rocky valley, cascading down hundreds of waterfalls and small, crystal clear pools.

The trail was very rocky and Lidia, after telling me she was as sure-footed as a mountain goat, stumbled a few times, trip-tripping her way along the path. This made me chuckle and I may have teased her a little about it. I spoke too soon, because while I was negotiating a huge, flat rock, I tripped on it and went down like a bag of crap. As I was falling, a strange sound came out of my mouth, which sounded something like "hwooot". I have no idea where that came from, but in an impressive display of skill and dexterity, I caught my sunglasses in mid-air as they came flying off my face. I then slapped the rock with both of my hands with a sharp crack. The shock reverberated up both of my arms, through my elbows and into my shoulders. It took a while for them to recover and I found it hard to lift my phone for a selfie with a shooting pain up into my shoulder for a while.

After traversing the Fairy Pools for an hour or two, we left the Isle of Skye and drove to Loch Ness. On the way we passed the Eilean Donan Castle, which was a beautiful medieval castle built on a small island on a lake. We then drove to Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness. This is a huge castle on the shores of Loch Ness, where the Jacobites fought for Scottish independence. Unfortunately they blew up part of the castle to stop it from falling into English hands, so much of it was in ruins. It is still a majestic site on the lake, though and we spent some time walking the grounds and keeping an eye out for the Loch Ness Monster in the lake. We saw Nessie and took some amazing photos, even patting her on the snout. OK, that last part is not true, but it's a nice fantasy.

We spent the next couple of hours driving along Loch Ness and various other lakes until we arrived at our accommodation for the night. We stayed at a lakeside hotel called Corriegour House, which also had a Michelin star restaurant. It was a cosy, traditional style hotel with a lounge area and open fire and an old bar. I continued my research into the different whiskies of Scotland while Lidia had a couple of wines and then we had dinner in the restaurant overlooking the lake.

The next day we set off to Loch Lomond, passing through a massive valley on the way that seemed to stretch for hundreds of kilometres in every direction with no farms, houses or anything else there, not even livestock. It was a surreal landscape with massive mountains in the distance on either side.

Our first stop was a tiny town called Glenfinnan where there is a massive aqueduct with a railway line on it. A steam train goes past a couple of times a day and has been used for many movies, including as the Hogwarts Express in the first Harry Potter film. We had checked the timetable and were sure we would miss the train, but wanted some shots of the viaduct anyway, so we went there, arriving to find no parking places anywhere. We had to park a couple of kilometres away and walk. We wondered why there were so many cars and then found out when we arrived. The steam train was coming through and we missed it by about 1 minute. Bad timing. Anyway we got one shot of the train and some great shots of the viaduct, just not together. That night, we spent another lovely night in a heritage hotel called Knockderry House where we enjoyed another magnificent meal.

The following morning we left early and drove the long way to Glasgow. We stopped at Doune Castle, which has been used as Winterfell in Game of Thrones, as well as a filming location for Outlander and Monty Python's The Holy Grail. The audio commentary was made by Eric Idle and was hilarious.

We then drove to Stirling Castle, an imposing castle on a hill overlooking he town of Stirling, then on to Falkirk where a modern sculpture called the Kelpies is found. The Kelpies are two massive horse heads rising out of the ground. They are simply enormous and very impressive. We took a few photos and then drove on to Glasgow.

We dropped the car off at the rental agency after travelling 2,500 kilometres over the past 2 weeks in Scotland.

Glasgow is an interesting city. There's not a great deal to do there. After exploring the University, which dates back to 1492 and contains some truly magnificent buildings and cloisters, we had a look around West End. There are many funky restaurants and bars there and we enjoyed a drink in the famous Ubiquitous Chip Co. We then took an Uber to the East End, where we followed the mural trail for a while. Glasgow has many murals painted on the sides of buildings throughout East End to beautify the city and some of them are very impressive.