Scottish Highlands

Despite the biting cold of Summer we meandered around narrow winding roads that snaked up over high ridges covered in mossy heather and bracken. Stands of poplar, oak and pine trees grew amongst the damp green moss of the valleys and clear tumbling streams coursed and bubbled down the slatey hill sides. The views were grandiose despite the haze of misty rain and the almost ever-present overcast clouds. Wildflowers splashed colour over mountain sides and road verges, cheering up the otherwise grey-green landscape. There was much oohing and ahhing as we wove around those steep hills and deep valleys.

When we arrived at the land of the lochs we were even more impressed. Clear clean lakes beneath towering mountains that still had some patches of visible snow in the upper regions. The landscape was very dramatic – that being a word which aptly describes much of the wild parts of Scotland.

You need only walk briskly for a few kilometres to warm up (except for the ears, they never get warm) so morning strolls were very much order of the day. Rod managed to fulfill a dream of dazedly wandering about the Scottish highlands, and Georgie managed to fulfill hers of laying snugly warm in bed until he returned all agog with tales of the soggy wonders he had experienced.

The sharp and crumbling escarpments that reared so high up above that world were held so tenuously together by moss and heather. Every pore of the mountains oozed water, running in trickles, rivulets, cascades and thunderous clear waterfalls. Every scree slope was splashed with wildflowers amid the peat moss, which grew thickly between the scattered sheets of slate.

And always the biting wind blew, whistling around your earlobes and any other foolishly exposed body parts. Man it was cold. But stunningly awesome and beautiful at the same time.

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2 thoughts on “Scottish Highlands”

  1. Hahaha, icecube ears are a small price to pay for those views! Maybe invest in one of those dorky beanies with earflaps ? Billy Connolly doesn’t understand why evolution graces us with long nose hairs in old age – wonder if it’s to help keep warm while walking in the highlands…

  2. Holy cow, it looks so cold, but also dramatic and beautiful. It’s easy to imagine those valleys being filled with glaciers at the end of the last ice age.

    In the first picture of a loch the land is silhouette. I started to wonder what it looked like (I hadn’t scrolled down to the later pictures yet), so I used Gimp to lighten the dark areas.

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