[lights of a little port on the Orkney Islands, seen from B&B window, on a windy, rainy night]


This week's roll takes you into the Scottish Highlands, two years ago. Apart from the first one, which was taken on the Orkney Islands. Unfortunately, I have no other analogue pictures of the Orkneys (sigh), but at least I took some of the Scottish castles and Highlands. It was an unusually sunny summer and so my pictures of the Highlands are a bit different from what I thought they would be. But, hey, I will not complain about the sun :)







[Eilean Donan, this old, photogenic beauty! Also famous because of movies like Highlander and James Bond: The world is not enough]




[the ruins of Urquhart Castle on the shores of Loch Ness]

Bye, bye Scotland!

Driving through the Highlands is like you were soaked into a history book. One that also contains fairy tales.

With these pictures I say "Goodbye" and "See you soon" to Scotland which stole a piece of my heart. A very large piece.

Eilean Donan, you old beauty!

I don't doubt that this is one of the most often photographed buildings in Scotland.

Gone centuries never felt so near as when looking at this castle while the evening fog rolled in over the blue-green mountains.

uisge beatha

I still can smell this sweet-malty-sour-berry-something flavour that came out of the small hatch the guide opened to let us have a look. The odour was there the whole day, it hang in the mountains and followed us into the bus back to Inverness.

Apart from the smell, I also still have very vivid images in my head of that day: the fog rolling into the valley, the smoking chimneys of the distilleries peeping out of the dark green woods, the - also - dark stones of the houses, the whole atmosphere of Glenfiddich. It all looked like something from another time - I'm still not sure if past or future. Like something out of a Neil Gaiman-Book or H.G. Wells - a mixture of Steampunk and absolute sophistication.

Ghosts in the sun

On a sunny Sunday morning we took a bus from Inverness to Urquhart castle. The one hour trip takes you on a winding road along Loch Ness, which is so much larger than I ever imagined. Anyway, in my imagination a visit to Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle would be a mystical, gloomy trip through foggy, rainy Scotland... but no, Nessie and its Castle presented themselves in best "Summer health resort"-ish look with tons of sunshine and colours. I loved it.

 

And Nessie waved Goodbye (left side, head out of the lake).
Trust me, it was Nessie, not a boat.