We were off to Scotland! As we drove through increasingly wilder areas, the road signs gave directions that said simply,“The North,” like it was Game of Thrones or something.  

Scotland feels less manicured than England – wilder. The fields are not as curated –  you can see shrubbery encroaching and some reforestation happening.  There seem to be more sheep and cattle per square foot than what we have been seeing previously.

Speaking of sheep, there are these Scottish-style, black face sheep here. The lambs are absolutely killing me. They are so cute. And the adults have horns like big corkscrews.

We did a last-minute tweak on our schedule and ditched Glasgow, primarily on Grace’s advice. We just can’t do everything! Our Plan B was to literally pick a town that was halfway between Bakewell and Oban and stay two nights there. That town was Moffat. 

Tripadvisor had OK things to say about it and ChatGPT agreed, so we booked a room in the Moffatt hotel..

The Moffat hotel was wonderful and the town was indeed OK, but it just had this feeling of faded grandeur. It was yet another town that we have encountered that had its heyday in the Victorian era as a spa town.  

We used it as a homebase and made plans to go down to the coast and visit a couple seaside beaches and towns. We woke to pouring rain – which is honestly getting to me – endless gray skies and that misty drizzle. 

Because we are members of the National Trust, we found a NT Castle about an hour and a half away, and we decided to do a rainy road trip to the West Coast of Scotland to dip our toe in the Irish Sea.  We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves touring the beautiful Culzean Castle.

I call it a Castle because it was indeed fortified, but somewhere along the line it had been turned into an elegant manor house. In fact, they even gave the top floor of the castle to Eisenhower in gratitude for his contribution to the war.  President Eisenhower!!

A few weird things aside (the second largest collection of guns in England), I had finally found my Bridgerton home! The walls were painted soft shades of robin’s egg blue and butter yellow, the ceilings bright white and the draperies pale damask.  This house was not bleak. It was not dreary. It perched dramatically on a cliff overlooking the sea, and from it you could see Ireland  (if it wasn’t raining of course). 

We decided to take a slightly longer route home to see new scenery. It was a strange meandering one lane country road for most of it, which gave me a lot to look at and Scott a headache.

Along a part of Crawford John Road, the hills rose up sharply and we discovered that the sheep were not actually in a fence. They were munching along the side of the road. So this added to driving stress, certain that around the next corner would be an adorable lamb in the middle of the road. We drove slowly and cautiously, and that might be why we actually saw my huge bucket list item… A highland cow!  And because the road was nearly deserted. We were able to pull over both to admire some baby sheep, and to say hello to the coo!  A hairy coo in the wild! 

I had been fully prepared to go to a touristy petting zoo to see one, but I got to see it in the wild and he was a photogenic old boy! He totally posed for me.

From Moffett we drove to Sterling. Along the way, if we had time, maybe we could see The Kelpies. I hadn’t especially cared whether I saw them, but the moment they appeared I was stunned.  So Excited.  They are over 100 feet tall and each one weighs over 300 tons and are made of stainless steel panels. 

We super rushed our visit to The Kelpies to get to Stirling  for a 1 PM afternoon tea date at our hotel.  We made it!  Everything was delicious, but it was heavy on the sweets. I still believe the best afternoon tea we have ever had was in Victoria, Canada.

 When we checked in, they put us in an upgrade because there was a plumbing problem with room number 10. We were in a beautiful corner room with a bay window that looked out over the park across the street, and if we stood and leaned just right, we could see the castle on the hill. We felt pretty spoiled. (On our way out the next morning we went through the basement to get to the car park and there in a corner with daylight basement windows, next to the washing machine was room number 10.) 

We had plenty of time to see the castle that afternoon.  It sat atop a large hill on a volcanic outcropping, visible from the entire valley.  A strategic vantage and stronghold. We arrived at the gates  just in time to take a fascinating guided tour. Man! The Scottish/English wars were brutal and bloody.

I have read that Sterling Castle is Scotland’s crown jewel and it certainly lived up to that. We wandered back through medieval streets to our hotel, navigating narrow roads and deeply cobbled streets.

We loaded up and headed out to Oban.  Along the way we visited a Scott Stop – Doune Castle, which was the setting for Monty Python and The Holy Grail. More recently it appeared in Outlander and even served as Winterfell in Game of Thrones.  Scott and I stood with our head sets on and got a chuckle from the narration of Terry Jones and of the Outlander track by Sam Heughan, who admitted that the Outlander cast would pose along the castle ramparts and recreate scenes from Monty Python.

Film credits aside, it was a modest castle by comparison to others we have visited.  The gardens and grounds were non-existent, and it was small and compact.  

Between Doune and Oban, we took a blogger’s advice and took a windy side trip to visit some beautiful “falls” and have a creekside tea and scone in a cozy tea house.  Driving along that side road, we had our second Coo encounter!  We pulled over and admired the small herd, although they look like big shaggy puppies, the bull made me nervous!  

We made it to Oban and are looking forward to tomorrows trip the Hebrides Islands! Canceling Glasgow in order to wander among some Scottish country roads was totally worth it!

Culzean Castle and drive photos

The Kelpies!

Stirling Castle

Road trip to Oban