Scotland trip: Highlands

Except for the Jacobite steam train in the Harry Potter post and the lake in the announcement post, you haven't seen much of the Highlands yet. Some people might wonder anyway, what is there to see in the Highlands? Well, this is answered quite easily: landscape, of course!

In Banavie, the tiny village where our hostel was, there's really not much to see. Maybe they were serious when naming the hostel "Chase The Wild Goose" - because you can't really do much else! It literally consists of a handful of houses, a hotel with a restaurant and the hostel. But it is actually possible that Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was born there. What a coincidence! xD

However, they have one "tourist attraction" in Banavie: Neptune's Staircase, a staircase lock on the canal. When we passed it on our way to a supermarket (finding a supermarket there is not the easiest task, just saying!), there were quite a few people standing around. But we were probably not the target group of this attraction, regarding our age ...

And what else is there to see in Banavie? Well, let me do a summary in pictures:

The Caledonian Canal

A "forest". Looked a bit bigger on the map ...

Stairs leading to nowhere?

No, actually, the stairs ended at a WW1 memorial and a quite nice viewpoint:

That's Banavie! (Quite green - due to the amount of rain, I guess...)

If you're wondering now: yes, Banavie is really small. Unlike all the villages in Ireland, it doesn't even have a pub. Or a supermarket. For both, you need to go to Caol, the neighbouring village. Fortunately, you only need to pass Banavie train station, Caol begins just behind. Let me demonstrate the dimensions on the map I consulted at the hostel:

When walking through Caol, there's also lot of landscape surrounding you - but a few more houses, all looking the same, I think:

Doesn't that remind you of Ireland? :-D

And there's actually a restaurant/pub. Exactly one, I think. ^^ Needless to say: we went there in the evening! (That's where I saw the Glenfinnan Viaduct and Jacobite pictures.)

When having passed the pub, you continue walking for some time, until you finally spot a sign pointing out the way to the shopping centre:

Before you get too excited: this "shopping centre" basically consists of Londis (a small supermarket), a boutique, a laundry place, two Chinese takeaways, an Indian takeaway - and an alcohol counselling. Anyway, we only needed a supermarket, so that was alright for us.

You might have seen it on the map already (it's called Community Centre there): the shopping centre is just next to a lake. To answer the questions from the announcement post: it's the Loch Linnhe. Loch means lake in Scottish English, obviously. And regarding the temperature, it was not really warm, which you might have guessed from my clothing on the picture. Maybe a bit more than 10 degrees?
Anyway, I wanted to go back to the lake later, when we didn't have to go grocery shopping, to take some more pictures. According to the others, I got every possible angle of the lake. :-P

They could be right - but it was just so beautiful! Next to the lake, there was also a playground with a few swings. I think I never saw swings with a better view than these! During the swinging session, the others established swinging selfies and videos, and also took other pictures while swinging ...

The anonymous swinging picture.

But there's more to do in the Highlands than swinging, of course. In the afternoon, we had already made our way to Inverlochy Castle, which you can see in the bottom right corner of the map picture. According to the internet, it's in Fort William, but in fact, it's more halfway between Banavie and Fort William. But since Fort William is not only the name of the town itself, but also of the region surrounding it, well ... (So e.g. Banavie is 4 km from Fort William, but also in Fort William, depending on what you're referring to.)
However, that's another direction when starting at the train station. But, of course, there are also mountains surrounding you:

That's what it looks like when it's not raining. However, it was raining all the way to the castle and back, I think. So I took this picture later on that day ...

The castle (ruin). To be honest, the landscape around it was more impressive. ^^

And maybe even more impressive: the view out of the hostel window after (!) we had returned:

So here's the blue sky now!

The next day, we took the bus to Fort William. If you're surprised by that, let me tell you something: yes, there is regular public transport in the region of Fort William - and it's actually better than the public transport in my German hometown!

When we arrived in Fort William town, it was raining again, of course ... But at some point, it stopped - at least for a while - and we got to enjoy the bit of civilisation in the middle of nowhere:

The High Street ...

... with the West Highland Museum (it's free!) ...

... and an ice cream shop (nope, it's never too cold for ice cream).

A church ...

... and another church, just next to it.

Since the surface of Loch Linnhe is a bit bigger than just a few square metres, you could also visit it in Fort William. Of course, I took some more pictures:

Afterwards, I really had every possible angle, I suppose. The rest of Fort William was the Jacobite / Hogwarts Express, I think.

We ended our stay in the Highlands with a cozy night in the hostel, playing Cluedo and Monopoly ...

As I mentioned before, there are only three trains from Banavie back to civilisation (Glasgow) per day. So we had to take the train at the quite nightly time of 7:17 a.m. Again, we couldn't sit together because of the annoying seat reserving system. So I had lots of fun when a family of father, mother and son entered the train in Fort William, one stop after Banavie. Unlike me, the son was wide awake, reading the Diary of a Wimpy Kid (out loud from time to time) and talking to his plush Haggis!

(sneaky picture from behind my green bag)

I'm ending the post with this picture, because what could be more Scottish than a plush Haggis...?