July 3, 2007
We rented a car in Edinburgh and bravely drove out of the city to explore the beautiful countryside of Scotland. We gave ourselves two weeks to drive around Scotland to visit towns, see castles, and have fun. Below are photos of Doune Castle which was originally built in the 13th century.
The 1952 movie Ivanhoe, with Elizabeth Taylor and Robert Taylor, was filmed here as well as the British comedy Monty Python and the Holy Grail in 1974.
We soon discovered that Scottish roads are very narrow, with pull-offs to allow on-coming traffic to pass.
This is a two-lane road:
Scottish Tourist Information Offices were in every town and we found them to be a very reliable way to book Inns and B&Bs every night. We didn’t make any prior arrangements because we couldn’t judge how long it would take us to travel between towns.
I took these photos in the town of Oban which had many Victorian-style buildings. It wasn’t a pretty place and seemed to be a ferry port to get out to the Hebrides Islands.
The only tourist site in Oban, besides the whisky distillery, was McCaig’s Folly. The stone structure was designed on the Colosseum in Rome and built in 1897.
The Scottish Highlands are magnificent, with steep rolling green hills, and vast expanses of land sweeping down to the sea.
Lovely white stone cottages and sheep dot the landscape:
Oncoming cars move rapidly and we had to duck into “Passing Places” along the narrow roads.
We were driving on the left!!
