Scotland! Ingleton to Plockton

So FINALLY we are on our holidays.  It seemed to take ages to get to here, and then of course the week we went away was completely manic - realised the day before we left that Tom had no school shoes, trainers, football boots etc etc for school, so had to do a quick trip to Kendal to get all that on top of trying to work out what to pack etc etc.

We decided to go a day earlier than planned, having a van we can do that - yay!.  We worked out that it was 380ish miles to get to our first destination, which is a bit of a long day, especially as once we passed Glasgow the roads get narrower and narrower.  So Matt spent some time on Google trying to find a campsite in the right sort of area with availability for the Wednesday night.  Took a while but he got there in the end.

So, we packed the van up - all very strategic as we were taking the bike carrier with us and we discovered that once the bike carrier was on we couldn't open the boot door - so everything we needed for the first day would need to be up top.  Got there in the end and we headed off around 10.30 as planned.  We had a very easy journey to Moffat where (of course) we had to have our lunch at Café Arieté - Matt's first taste of haggis - very important.  We then went to the toffee shop so Matt could buy himself a bottle of whiskey (another tradition) before headed on up and through Glasgow to Drymen where we took some very narrow roads to find our campsite.

Eyes closed when catching!

Eyes open when catching...

Was a lovely campsite too - very small and on the West Highland Way so was mainly hikers with big backpacks.  We were the only camper there and were put on a big field with 2 other families.  Was a lovely quiet site, mainly because most people were exhausted hikers and also no alcohol was allowed on site (although we did sneak in a bottle of whisky and had a dram behind our blinds!)  Tom was quite excited and we had a couple of mad sessions of running around like loons to get rid of his energy!  We had curry and rice for tea (I made the curry yesterday to make it easy on us), then a shower and bed.

It was a quiet night - and we slept better - still not great at sleeping in the van, but we will get there. We packed up and were on the road by 10.  I did the first stint - along Loch Lomand to the Green Welly Stop in Tyndrum.  Beautiful scenery and not too much traffic on the road which is great.  After a cake and toilet break at the Green Welly Stop, we headed on our way through Rannock Moor and Glencoe to Fort William where we parked up at Morrisons, had lunch in a greasy spoon at the train station and found a barber's for Tom to get his hair done (I hate cutting Tom's hair - it is so fine, it is easy to get it wrong).  

Then back in the van through the West Highlands to Kyle of Lochalsh to do some shopping (local butchers and co-op) before heading to our holiday cottage in Duncraig which is just across Loch Carron from Plockton.  We had trouble locating our holiday cottage (door had changed colour and instructions weren't quite right) but we got there in the end.  We are in a tiny cottage which is part of the old stable block at Duncraig Castle.  Very much the middle of no-where. It has two bedrooms and a lounge / diner / kitchen all open plan which is how we like it on holiday (I hate having to cook in a separate room to everyone else when we are away).  We unloaded the van and then went for a look around.  

We walked down to the castle which has been converted into a very luxurious Bed and Breakfast and looks very very lovely.  However, that wasn't the main thing for us to see, because, in the grounds of the castle is its very own train station - which is a request stop on the Kyle to Inverness route.  They were very impressed by it - a cute station which fits a 2 carriage train nicely.  It has 4 trains a day each way, we will have a day trip to Inverness whilst we are here so they can use it!

We walked back, I made tea (pork chops from the butchers), and then Matt had a scary 30 mins when he thought his computer wasn't charging (all sorted) and before we knew it, it was time for bed.  Everyone was quite tired.