A Stirling effort

Another dreary highland day was revealed when peeking out the dew covered window first thing. Packing is becoming more familiar now and breakfast was as good as yesterday. Even if spent in a room full of bussing central European's. Managed not to mention the war so all was good. After loading the wheels and paying the bill we headed off to Inverness to collect the item left behind the day before. In doing so unduly left the road maps behind on the counter of the hotel. This has to stop. Being extremely lucky in that we were planning to go back through the Ness today anyway, all it took was an extra 25 mins to park, walk, ask, wait, collect and walk back to the car. Thus once again fully armed with the plastic fantastic we started the drive along the great rift. Lots of interesting sights with canals with locks and swingbridges. Water everywhere not just in the lakes but also cascading down the extremely impressive mountain slopes because we were also getting quite a few rain showers between patches of ...not having rain showers.

Lock Ness was fairly choppy in the strong westerly ripping up through the rift. Because we were on a fairly tight schedule we didn't spend too long looking for Nessy. Not quite sure what all the contention is about as she was plain to see when we stopped for a quick pic across to the castle. Not sure if the tourist boats noticed... whatever, we were in hurry to get to Sterling so we pushed on. The radio was nicely keeping us informed of the traffic conditions and it became more and more apparent we were running into trouble ahead. A truck had managed to roll over and spill grain all over the road. This was cause enough to block both sides of the highway and the crane called in to pick it up was not doing the job well enough to get the road clear for us in time. Honestly..the trouble people here will go to just to stop us sticking to our itinerary is extraordinary. Hopefully Brexit will fix this. And so we had suffer the indignity of loosing more than an hour by performing a huge diversion further along the coast and then up along some more incredibly scenic valleys. Stress levels were pretty high as we had to get to Stirling in time. One nifty manouver using the power of the VW to skirt an annoying bus was duly rewarded with gasps from the passenger seat and then a relatively clear run for the rest of the diversion. This got us over the highlands and eventually to Stirling on time. The castle here came well recommend (thus the anxiety to see it) and extremely rewarding it was. This is so much better than Edinburgh's attempt.

We were enthralled by the visible history, the way that it was presented and just the general ambience of the place. We were there just in time to join the last tour of the day (due to previously mentioned driving skills) and so we got the general gist and then had free poke around amongst ever diminishing crowds and a setting sun. Many, many photos taken. Some with no-one in them. Content that all day's boxes were ticked - off we took to hit hit the motorway and thus shoot straight down to the airport and our lodgings for the night. A quick sesh in the bar including dinner and bit of planning for the day's movements. Back to the room to rearrange baggage to cater for rediculous weight restrictions, penning this entry and its off to sleep for a couple of hours pending a very early start in order to see what delights the continent can bring. So long Scotland.. Maybe next time hagis will be consumed. Maybe.