(Yeah, I know this is late, so sue me! It was a long day yesterday!)

Early start today, as I had to be in the heart of the city for an 8am departure of my tour. This was my third tour with Rabbies, and like the previous ones, I was not disappointed. The last time I did one of their tours it left from the Royal Mile, but they’ve since moved and opened a cafe just near the Balmoral hotel. This is a lot better than their previous location, as it means I don’t have to hike up to the Mile to get there! I had time to grab a hot chocolate and a bottle of water for the trip, and then we were off.

My guide for this tour was Mike, a native of Edinburgh, and he was one of the best tour guides I’ve ever had. We left bang on 8am, and spent a while trying to get out of Edinburgh’s traffic. This gave Mike time to tell us a bit about the city and our plan for the day.

This’ll probably be a fairly short entry, text-wise, but there’ll be plenty of photos to make up for it. The highlands of Scotland are one of my absolute favourite places on Earth, and I hope the photos show why – the scenery is simply amazing.

Our route took us past Linlithgow Palace, birthplace of Mary, Queen of Scots, as well as past Stirling Castle and Doune Castle (which was used for the filming of Monty Python and the Holy Grail!). Our first stop for the day was the town of Callander this was mainly for refreshments and restrooms if needed. I had a quick stop at the tourist information office (and a lovely chat with the lady there) and bought an amazing fruit and nut flapjack and some rocky road from a bakery before heading back to the bus.

A short way out of Callander we stopped at Loch Lubnaig, the first of many lochs we were to see today. This one was half frozen over, and we spent a little while skipping rocks across the ice.

(When I said it was going to be a short entry, I didn’t mean quite this short. It seems I never got around to finishing this entry, so it’s on the to-do list still)