Back to our Scotland Trip – Finishing Off Day Five! Glenfinnan to Oban

Today we finalized the last of our plans for our spring break trip to Ireland in March. I am determined to get the pictures of our trip to Scotland up BEFORE we leave! Ideally that would include the week in Iceland as well….but considering our recent trips to Australia, Italy and Slovenia are still (mostly) not yet done – I will take what I can get! If you have not read our adventures to this point of the trip, you can do that by clicking here.

After our morning hike to see the “Harry Potter” aquaduct in Glenfinnan we stopped off at Fort William for a warm pub lunch.

I had a delicious Irish Coffee and another in my series of Shepherd’s pies….it makes me want to put one on the menu for this week!

Serg had a loaded Steak Baked Potato.

We had considered taking a ski lift to the highest point in Fort William and a couple of other outdoor activities, but the weather was a bit cloudy. We were heading to Glen Coe for the night. We decided to go ahead and head to our hotel and maybe see what there was to do in the area and on the way.

these are the view out our hotel room window – lovely view – but as you can see, not a lot to do but hike!

It turns out that the town where the hotel was was very tiny and had mostly places to stay for those hiking in the Glen Coe area. But when we make plans when we travel we keep a list of things that we can maybe fit in if weather or other plans change. Oban is a sea town that we had taken out, but by the time we got to Glen Coe (in true Scottish fashion) the weather had cleared. So we decided to drive to the coast for dinner and stop at some sights along the way.

Our first quick stop along the way was in Portnacroish at Castle Stalker.

Can you just imagine living out there on that tiny piece of land?

If you are there during the warmer months, you can take a boat out and do a tour of the castle. It is one of the ones that I would have liked to have been able to have seen while open.

The castle is located on an islet off an inlet – just a little bit of water around!

Just outside of Oban we stopped for a few minutes at Dunstaffnage and Gylen. Again, neither were open, but it was getting a bit late. We had just enough time to walk the grounds and get some nice pictures.

We got to Oban literally just as the sun was setting. It is a coastal beach town. We were not sure where we were going or even where we wanted to eat. We drove down through the main area of town and parked on the pier. Just as we did we were treated to the most glorious sunset. We were hungry, but we couldn’t pull ourselves away – each couple of minutes the sky would change hues of purples and reds.

We slowly made our way down toward where we could see places to eat, but it was so hard to stop taking pictures.

Fishing boats were making their way in to the docks.

I have not done anything with the pictures, they are all just straight from the camera. No special settings or filters. Just a Scottish Sunset.

Just before it went dark – the purples, pinks and yellows all seemed to converge at the same time.

Finally it was time for dinner. Sometimes when I do these days I marvel at how much we seem to cram in to one day. We had started the day early on with a lovely breakfast at the wonderful B&B, had lunch in the pub in Fort William and now were trying to find dinner in Oban. I wanted seafood, but the places near us were all full and pricey. We ended up at an Italian place. It’s always fun to do an ethnic place in another country (one of my favorites was our “american’ experience in Verona, lol).

So I ordered the mushrooms – good thing I was wanting to save room for gelato!

How about some Knickerbockerglory or some world famous tablet?!

The day ended with one of the most bizarre evenings of our trip. Of course it was dark. When you live in a big country you are used to travelling far and wide and very often at night. In the dark. Yes? When your country is smaller – driving further distances at once must not be so common. It was very dark when we started back to Glen Coe. It was so very dark. The roads are narrow and not many street lights. At all. Once we started most other cars we encountered were all pulled over to the sides of the road. Sleeping? I am not sure, but we passed just one or two cars the entire trip.

What we did see……lots and lots and lots of eyes. Deer eyes. Reflecting in our headlights. Standing in the middle of the road. We had to drive so slow. It was creepy. Finally we decided we needed to put some music on to relieve the tension. The trip TO Oban had been delightful and not long. This was going to be painfully slow. We found one station on the radio. It was a BBC symphony. Music from World War 2. Seriously. We let it play for maybe 15 minutes….It was a recording of a live performance. After each song there was furious clapping. The whole thing was like being trapped in a Twilight Zone episode. Somehow we missed a turn to take the shorter route back and took the more inland route. We had no idea how long it would take and how many deer we may nearly hit. Then – around a bend – and there was our hotel. Never so glad to be back to a sleepy little place!

Sweet Dreams to our Day 5!

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