*** I am still waiting for Robert to write about our epic day on a boat in Scotland. But in the meantime, I'll add other posts...possibly a bit out of order.
A long time ago...when we lived in Minnesota we became friends with a wonderful couple who'd immigrated from the UK to the US for a job. The husband was born in Scotland, on the Isle of Arran. For years we would talk to him about how exotic it would be to visit that island and how cool it was that he was born in such a "mysterious" place. Well, ten years later, somehow we found ourselves traveling very close to the Isle of Arran and we couldn't miss the opportunity to visit this place that we had heard so much about.
So early in the morning we drove about an hour and a half from our house to Claonaig which is a tiny village important because it has a small ferry that goes to the Isle of Arran.
There are two ferries that go to the island--one was this one and other one was on the other side that is closer to Glasgow (a bit bigger and more frequent). We watched the ferry arrive marveling at how few cars will actually fit on it. I think they said something like fifteen cars can fit.
The ride was smooth and quick--30 minutes or so. As we approached the island, all eyes turned to this monstrosity by the shore--a yacht, belonging to Roman Abramovich, a Russian businessman who owns Chelsea Football Team. Wikipedia tells me this yacht is the second largest privately owned yacht in the world and is worth about €340 million.
The Isle of Arran is quite small but is the largest island in the Firth of Clyde--about 167 sq miles with a population of around 4,600. As we arrived in port of Lochranza, a tiny village where our friend was from, we drove to Lochranza Hotel (two minutes) as that's the place that his parents owned for many years.
We even stopped by and talked to the reception lady who sort of remembered our friend but wasn't sure.
Yeah...we had fun taking pictures with Hamish.
We followed our friend's advice and drove through the village and turned off to one of the trailers that went up the mountain to look over the village.
After a three minute walk up, we got to the Whins, a very curious shop.
Mark asked us, "Who are the Faeries?". He thought it was a couple like Mr. and Mrs. Faery or something and they meet here.
The view of the village was in front of us.
And this shop was behind us. The owner of the shop said the shop is very well known!:) It's kind of a crafty shop of miscellaneous creations and souvenirs. The guy paints rocks into creatures with eyes. Kind of cute. So Mark bought a rock to remind him of the Isle of Arran and named it Hamish (our friend doesn't know that yet).
We decided to walk down to the beach on the other side of the island. It was a beautiful walk/hike that took us about an hour. Gorgeous views took us to the Fairy Dells.
The weather was kind of crazy! Clouds were passing us by quickly, then it was sunny and after just a fifteen minutes of the kids playing at the beach here, suddenly it started to pour!
That lasted only five minutes and we were back to dry sunny/cloudy weather. That is why it is so green here.
Finally, Alex found the creek of his dream here and they spend a lot of time with Katya building all sorts of things.
As we got back to our car and took a picture (with the Lochranza hotel in the background), it started to rain again.
We had very little time left as we wanted to make sure to get to the ferry that was not the last one (we were worried of not fitting onto the ferry and having to stay the night here:)). We drove a little bit further in the village and decided to walk up another beautiful hike up the river. By then Mark was not keen on hiking or going anywhere, but we convinced him to hurry up.
The walk was very steep and muddy in some places. Alex was not super excited to go on this hike either, but we promised him he could play in the river if we actually go there.
No one got hurt or fell down as we walked up the hill to find this gorgeous view of the valley above the village. As I am looking at this picture I can assure you that although it looks pretty and stuff, it doesn't feel as amazing as this place is in reality.
And Alex got what he wanted. He went crazy in this freezing rushing water.
I was just praying no one would trip and fall in and had to turn my blind eye on this whole adventure as Robert "watched" the kids.
The kids wished we had another hour in this place, but we had to turn around and walk down to the ferry.
The kids were happy and wet but we had extra clothes, so all was good. We got to the ferry on time, crossed the loch, and turned right to a dead end village Skipness where we had dinner of fresh seafood.
I actually had to ask the owner, what is "langoustines".
In case you wanted to see it up close.
What did Mark order? Any surprise here? Oh wait, yes, this is different--NOT squid.
Eating this fresh seafood dinner outside, but the castle on a warm July night was a great end to a very adventurous day.
Giving it a thumbs up.
On the way home we passed some really nice lakeside villages.
We got home when it was still light but late.
Lyana.
No comments:
Post a Comment