Our conference in Edinburgh finished on Thursday afternoon and we took advantage of the long, light summer evenings to head out of the city. We quickly left the Edinburgh behind and made our way west towards Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park.
The road wound through several valleys before running along the side of Loch Lubnaig. We stopped at a small beach and were surprised to see people swimming in the Loch. Although the weather had been unseasonably warm and dry in Scotland, it didn’t quite feel like swimming weather!
We continued to climb up into the national park passing through more lush green valleys. After a while we came out onto a high plateau where the infamous Scottish weather finally caught up with us. We stopped at a lookout and watched several showers race across the valley in front of us.
We continued on towards Glencoe, passing by a series of lakes. We stopped to take a few photos and were greeted by swarms of midges. Luckily they seemed to be moving slowly and we were able to hop back into the car without getting bitten.
From here, we slowly started our descent into the Glencoe Valley, the scenery was beautiful and the late evening sunshine gave the hills a beautiful glow.
The midges that was had encountered earlier didn’t bother us here and we were made several stops to take in our surroundings. Despite having only driven a relatively short distance, the scenery felt quite different.
The road took us down through the Coe River Valley which apparently is famous for having appeared in the Skyfall film. Unfortunately the film reference was once again lost on me, but I could certainly appreciate the beautiful valley.
The valley ended at the small town of Glencoe where the road ran alongside Loch Linnhe. Although it was getting late the sun was only just setting and we stopped for a while to watch it set behind the mountains.
Our route took us along the shore of Loch Linnhe, a sea loch, to the tiny hamlet of Port Appin where we had booked a B&B for the night. Even although it was after ten o’clock it was still only just getting dark and from our room at the Bed and Breakfast we were able to watch the last of the sunset over the mountains on the Isle of Mull in the distance.