Have you read Scotland in Miniature - Pre trip?

After this painful trip planning D-day came quite fast, as it was the morning after :)

The weather was wonderful!
The trip started with 5 hours of travel by bus to Glasgow, the second largest city of Scotland. We could have taken a train, but a weird thing was the 5 and a half hours to get there from Manchester (changing at Edinburgh!) whereas the return would take only 3h30. Do the trains work better in the North-South direction in Britain?
The price (twice the bus ticket) made the choice easier.

We crossed the north of England on a motorway. We had our first surprises:
    ~Ads can be displayed thanks to truck left in the middle of a field.
    ~The 2 ways can be separated by a sheep field!
    ~The landscape was wonderful. It looks like a desert with nothing apart from a couple of trees.
 


Unfortunately we missed the train to the harbour because of the short time to change (20 min) and a traffic jam in the only city we went through.

We bought the train ticket anyway and another surprise, Scottish people have Scottish bank notes!


The next train allowed us about 2 hours before departure. We decided to find some food and to walk around to have a glance at Glasgow and have a rest in a park by the sun.

 

We really felt in Scotland…


Less charming with so much concrete…
 

Arrived at the station for the next (direct) train: cancelled for a mysterious reason! But only 10 min later the train was announced once again! Sometimes I feel lucky.

We arrived at 7pm on the isle of Arran at Brodick, the main village.


First disappointment: the place looked more touristy than wild. But anyway it looked so peaceful when all the ferry passengers disappeared only 15 min after the arrival!
We needed to find a bed. We knew that the youth hostel was full for the whole WE according to the internet.
The timing was right according to my travel guide: we would have half an hour at the tourist information center (TIC)… wrong information: the TIC was closed from 5pm that day.

We walked a bit around the harbour passing those probably-too-expensive-hotels-with-sea-views and found ourselves at a cosy family hotel, where a friendly man opened the door…
“Sorry we are fully booked… this is a bank holiday WE (I know)…but may be… do you have a mobile?”
He came back.
“We are ringing couples of places for you; we will find something for you…”
His wife came to meet us:
“There is room at the Corrie Hotel, 8miles from here; you need to catch a bus…. Or I can drive you there.”
Wow, we were still really lucky! It is so nice to meet such helpful and nice locals!
She came back.
“Actually the patron will come to drive you.”

10 min later a 35-40year old man picked us up.
In the car
“What are you doing here? (…) Just planning at the last minute? (…) We have some cancellations, you are lucky!
- We are here to enjoy Nature in the isle… we have heard about the seals in the area!
-Seals?! There are plenty of them; you will see them for sure!”
And then he stopped in the middle of the (empty) road
“Over there! On the rock! Look I can see 4 of them! If you are patient you can even go really close.”
You can imagine how excited we were. They were my first wild seals! Unfortunately we couldn’t say to  him “Let’s stop to see the seals…”

When we arrived at the hotel he proudly introduced us to “their” seal:

“It is a wooden one but everybody think it is a real one”

We stayed there 2 nights and we had an en-suite room (bathroom with bath tube included). The quality hotel was acceptable but with view on the sea and breakfast… the price a bit out of budget but it was better that sleeping outside among birds and seals!

The next 2 days would be wonderful, we dreamt of the numerous seals while watching the sunset…


The day started with a traditional cooked breakfast: bacon, sausages, a tomato, mushrooms and eggs (fried, scrambled, boiled or poached), toasts with jam, plus (of course!) tea (milk and sugar please!). A real nightmare for anybody with cholesterol but helpful to start the exhausting  day of walking that we had ahead of us.
We first caught a bus to the harbour where we could decide whether it would be possible to hire bicycles. 90km to go around the isles, mostly hills… A walk would be enough we decided :)
We followed the advice given by a mountain shop seller. Really friendly and helpful, she didn’t try to sell us any useless maps.
The path she indicated brought us into the forest and led us the next village Lamlash, from where we could see Holy Island. It is said to be filled with Buddhists.


The unconscious girls that we were, wanted to walk all around the island… But the map's scale reminded us that it would be a long, long way!

We thus caught a bus to the second biggest village, Blackwaterfoot, located on the opposite side of the island. The southern part was really pretty. We saw long haired cows, a lighthouse and the deep countryside. But also a looooot of sheep.
We had about 3 hours to find the King Caves. We walked along one of the numerous golf greens and crossed a sheep field.

There were many lambs, so cute. We could be at 2 meters of them before there ran away to find Mummy sheep.
A long walk along the coast led us to the caves. It was nice to be so close to the Nature watching birds…

En route we saw a “stone sculpture”. Probably somebody started it and many people kept on expanding on it by adding their personal touch… Of course we built ours on our way back :)

The King’s Caves were more crowded (about 10 people, and among them a family of 4 obviously staying overnight [they seemed well equipped with sleeping bags and food]).



We went back by the same path to catch the bus to the northern island. The North was radically different with mountains and a desert area. The light rain made the land mysterious.




We stopped a bit further than the hotel. We were seal spotting again. Unfortunately, it started raining and the walk was without any results… A bit wet we walk 20 min to reach the hotel.


The adventure continues that way...