Skip to main content

Loch Lomond to Oban

Before our visit to Loch Lomond we stayed one night at an interesting house just north of Glasgow.  Interesting because of the head of the house was part Scottish Wildcat.  Samuel was most impressed by our handsome host.


We arrived at Balloch mid morning, the gateway village for visitors to Loch Lomond NP.  In Balloch we visited a small but very impressive raptor park.  The park provided a home for eagles, owls, hawks and falcons, some bred in captivity and some which had been rescued or confiscated from various situations.  Apparently the had quite a few Australian visitors since they were recently featured on some Aussie TV show.



Driving along the shore of the loch we stopped at an artisan store where we enjoyed a nice ploughmans lunch that we made up ourselves after browsing the store.  Elise was excited by her first sight of highland cattle in the adjacent paddock.


The small village of Luss on the western shore of the Loch was our very pretty next stop.  It seemed likely that tourism accounted for almost 100% of the economy judging by the huge carpark full of cars and busses on the edge of the village.  The streets were picture postcard perfect, the old church and graveyard suitably rustic and the gift shops were full of the expected teatowels, spoons and woollens.  We went to the local smokehouse for some salmon as our edible souvenir of our visit.

We spent the latter part of the afternoon covering the very scenic and winding drive to Oban.  We stopped for 30 seconds at Inveraray Castle for a quick photo through the gates.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

New York: National Museum of Mathematics

When we first came to New York we all wrote down where we wanted to go while we were here. All of us included the math museum (confirms our status as a family of total geeks) so that is where we headed today. On the way we went to the LEGO shop. There was plenty of great Lego art and some pretty cool sets that Samuel hadn't seen before.   The best part was the machine that used a palm print to generate your Lego avatar. Eric: Check out the six pack. Not sure where they got the toupee from though. Samuel is Johnny Depp? Amazingly accurate this one. The famous Flatiron building A nd the math museum? Of course we enjoyed it! It was all interactive with loads of old and new problems to solve. We even got to use maths in an artistic way.  Tessellating Samuel and Eric were most entranced by a floor exhibit which changed periodically but had a range of practical problems. The museum was well populated in the morning with ...

Santa Cruz

Unlike our first island hop, Isabela to Santa Cruz was done by boat (see the addendum below for my thoughts about inter island boat travel).  At least the early morning trip was a smooth one.  Luckily we had managed to book an apartment in Puerto Ayora which meant we could do some of our own catering for a change.  By the time we arrived we were slowing down some, we felt we'd seen much of the wildlife the islands offered and frankly, we were exhausted. So we didn't venture too far from Puerto Ayora. One nice place near town we did visit (Eric went twice) was Tortuga bay which was exactly what you would expect a tropical beach to look like.  In fact it had two beaches, one a surf beach and one a quiet cove where you could snorkel with barely a ripple.  There wasn't much wildlife here except a few Iguanas (and one turtle) but the warm water was great for a swim nevertheless. As with San Cristobal we took a taxi trip to the highlands, crawling in Lava tub...

Inca Trail day 4

This was the day we would arrive at Macchu Picchu so we awoke with a keen sense of anticipation.   To celebrate the last day on the trail, somehow the chef had whipped up an enormous cake which was served after breakfast.  After a discussion with Marco about the likely weather over the next two days we agreed that it would be best to tour Macchu Picchu as soon as we arrived in mid afternoon rather than wait until tomorrow. Marco assured us that this would mean less crowds and better weather (he was right). We could see the backside of the mountain above Macchu Picchu in front of us as we started out.  Unlike the last two days, today was mainly downhill.  We would have to descend about 1,000 meters and judging by the first part of the morning walk, most of this would be on steep and slippery rocky steps. After alternating descents and traversing along steep hillsides through cloud forest and bamboo groves we reached the ruins of Intipata. Intipata was a very...