A Holiday Up North Pt 1.
My family, or more specifically my Dad, thought it was a great idea for me to "get away and relax" during the final weeks before my finals. He decided to book a family holiday to the North West highlands of Scotland, hidden away between the Munros he booked a cottage between the dates of 3rd April -10th April. I thought I could make something out of this, so what follows is my attempt at travel blogging. There will be extracts from a trip journal and the occassional song suggestion to try to add depth to the words.
3rd April
Get onto the M6, travel north. Go past Preston, go past Lancaster, keep going through Carlisle, cross the border at Gretna Green, the road changes but keep going towards Glasgow. It is so easy to get to Glasgow, to get just the smallest, tantalising taste of Scotland. But this is all (or almost all) I knew of Scotland, "the Land of my Birth". We came off the motorway and just kept travelling through the gargantuan mountains. They were so vast that they appeared shaved down to size, their peaks blocked by the clouds.
Arrived at Fort William. Fort William, although the largest town for the next hundred miles North, turned out to be little more than a smattering of houses and shops, hidden away between the toes of Ben Nevis and it's giagantic, little brothers. It seems like this place is The End of Civilisation, a crazy last outpost before the real highlands begin. The people who live there seem to pretend that life continues at the same pace as in London, wearing designer clothes and reading trashy magazines about celebrities who live hundreds of miles away. There are tourist shops, a railway station and even a McDonalds!
Continuing the journey towards Lochcarron for a couple of hours, we stopped the car for a toilet break. With the engine killed, there was no sound on this, the main road to the North-West Highlands. Not even the universally dull cooing of pigeons or the singing of other birds could be heard. Nothing. The wilderness was like nothing I'd seen before. This was going to be awesome.
3rd April
Get onto the M6, travel north. Go past Preston, go past Lancaster, keep going through Carlisle, cross the border at Gretna Green, the road changes but keep going towards Glasgow. It is so easy to get to Glasgow, to get just the smallest, tantalising taste of Scotland. But this is all (or almost all) I knew of Scotland, "the Land of my Birth". We came off the motorway and just kept travelling through the gargantuan mountains. They were so vast that they appeared shaved down to size, their peaks blocked by the clouds.
Arrived at Fort William. Fort William, although the largest town for the next hundred miles North, turned out to be little more than a smattering of houses and shops, hidden away between the toes of Ben Nevis and it's giagantic, little brothers. It seems like this place is The End of Civilisation, a crazy last outpost before the real highlands begin. The people who live there seem to pretend that life continues at the same pace as in London, wearing designer clothes and reading trashy magazines about celebrities who live hundreds of miles away. There are tourist shops, a railway station and even a McDonalds!
Continuing the journey towards Lochcarron for a couple of hours, we stopped the car for a toilet break. With the engine killed, there was no sound on this, the main road to the North-West Highlands. Not even the universally dull cooing of pigeons or the singing of other birds could be heard. Nothing. The wilderness was like nothing I'd seen before. This was going to be awesome.
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