Road trips, mountain walks and holidays

Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland Edinburgh definitely is one of the most special places, at least for me personally. Not only because we have been living there for several years. Although Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland, it is only the second largest city in Scotland, the largest being Glasgow. It is home to just over half a million people, although in summer the city’s population can even double during the touristic season. The city hosts many different festivals throughout the summer, so tourists from all over the world come there to see those and even participate. In addition, Edinburgh’s Old Town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Getting there The Scots have done their best to make it easy to get to the city. At Edinburgh Airport, a variety of airlines live together in a friendly way. Prior to the pandemic, the airport handled almost 15 million passengers a year. For example, Riga, which is a city of similar size, accommodated only half of it (7.8 million passengers). Getting...

Glasgow is Scotland’s largest city, the fourth largest in the UK and the 27th largest in Europe. More than 600,000 people live in Glasgow today, even though the population was over 1.1 million before the middle of the 20th century. Since then, many people have moved to nearby towns and now in Grater Glasgow region live almost 1.8 million people, about a third of Scotland’s total population. What to see The city is well known for its university, founded in 1451. The university has 35,000 students from 140 countries, employs around 9,000 people and is one of the world’s top 100 universities. There are also a number of other highly ranked universities in Glasgow where young people from many parts of the world come to study. Although Glasgow has always been an industrial city, especially known for shipbuilding, it also has a very large cultural heritage. There are many museums, art galleries and exhibitions in the city, but the history can be felt simply by walking through its streets. Pop...

Scottish highways The road network in Scotland is very well developed and virtually all, even the smallest, roads are paved. There are relatively few holes on them, even if they are in remote areas, so driving is quite enjoyable. The total length of the Scottish highways (according to 2017 data) is 56 thousand 250 kilometres, of which 632 kilometres are motorways. Strange as it may sound, the longest road network is in the Scottish Highlands . There can be conventional Scottish roads with one lane in each direction (almost 28,000 kilometres in total), two- or three-lane motorways, or very narrow local roads with single file traffic sections. To be able to drive there, special passing places have been created on those roads. This type of carriageway is particularly common in the Scottish islands and makes driving slower but quite interesting. To get to and return from Scotland, most motorists use the M74, which runs from the southern border of Scotland and is a continuation of the M6 ...

West of Scotland If you are in Glasgow and fancy to go somewhere else, you can reach an interesting place on one of the western peninsulas of the Argyll and Bute region in a few hours. The Argill and Bute region is the second largest (almost 7,000 square kilometres, larger are only the Scottish Highlands) in Scotland and borders the Stirling , Scottish Highlands and a few other regions. However, the region has low population density and, with less than 90,000 living there, it is the sixth from the bottom of the list. The region begins relatively close to Glasgow, just before Helensburg. Because of its lakes, region has two large peninsulas and three large western Scottish islands – the Isle of Islay, the Isle Jura and the Isle of Mull. There are two major roads in the region in the north-south direction and one in the east-west direction (in its northern part). The vast majority of roads are local and on many occasions those have single lane for driving in both directions. However, as...

Central Scotland Stirling, known as the coronation place of the Scottish kings, is in central Scotland. It is often called the gateway to the Highlands because the famous region of the Scottish Highlands begins not that far from there. The city is one of the most popular tourist destinations and in the past has even been the capital of Scotland. Stirling was established as a royal city in 1130, although people have inhabited this area for about four thousand years. Stirling is around 25 miles north-east of Glasgow and less than 40 miles north-west of Edinburgh, forming a kind of a triangle on the map between these three Scottish cities; they are all well connected by modern motorways. Although Stirling has city status, it is only nineteenth of the 51 towns and cities in Scotland with a population of less than 38,000. Medieval Stirling castle and old town As the city is not too big, the old town is not large too, however, Stirling Castle , which is located at the top of a steep volcani...

Harry Potter After spending several days on the Isle of Skye , our next destination was the Scottish Highlands. On the way from Mallaig to Fort William we were observing exciting scenery of an old railway. Its track starts at Britain’s highest mountain, Ben Nevis, passes through the westernmost railway station Arisaig, then passes the deepest freshwater lake Loch Morar, and finally stops near Loch Nevis, Europe’s deepest seawater lake. The total length of the railway track is 135 kilometres (84 miles). The train itself, which runs on these tracks, became very popular because it was used for making movies about Harry Potter. In the film it is called Hogwarts Express; you may already know that the author of the book J.K. Rowling is from Scotland. The railway crosses the road several times, so we were able to watch the train’s journey across bridges, through gorges and tunnels more than once. Accommodation Our first destination was the small town of Strathyre because there is the hotel Mu...

Scotland and the amazing beauty of its islands While living in London, I had many conversations with Brits about Scottish islands, especially about Isle of Skye. Almost all of them knew about the Isle of Skye, although not many of them had visited this beautiful island located in the northwest of Scotland. Perhaps, because it is so far away from the UK – more than one thousand kilometres. However, the nature of the Isle of Skye is so unpredictable that you know either you may enjoy a nice holiday or weather conditions would challenge you all the way through while you are there. We accepted the challenge and went there for our early summer holidays. I must admit that we have chosen early June for going over to the Isle of Skye, knowing that there may be a chance to get some sunny days there during that time of the year. After being on the Isle of Skye already twice now, I can tell that it is one of the most beautiful places in Europe. Because of the people living there, because of natur...

The first morning on the Isle of Skye On the next morning after arrival on the Isle of Skye, we had an early walk towards the coast (not to mention that the coast is almost all around). The path led us to the nearest bay, discovering a beautiful view of a small local harbour where many fishing boats were parked. Such an amazing and quiet early morning scenery for our first day of holidays! The biggest surprise upon arrival to Skye late evening and later driving around the Isle of Skye was an observation that almost all roads are very narrow with frequent passing places. Of course, there also are wider roads, although the narrow ones are predominant, and you should note that when planning trips around the Isle of Skye. It may take way more time to get from one place to another because you may have to stop at many passing places and wait for oncoming cars very often. The good news is that traffic intensity on Skye is not as heavy as on average in the UK. Dunvegan Castle Our first major t...