Trip to Scotland
Traveling North
Traveling by train
We purchased rail passes that allowed us unlimited travel on the trains in Scotland and England for four days. According to the estimated arrival times I had online before we got to Scotland - the travel time by train from Edinburgh to Thurso (on the north coast) was about 8 hours and I thought that was going to be a horrendeous day!
As it turned out there was a rail bridge being worked on just outside Edinburgh so we had to take a "little" detour East to Stirling before continuing North. This detour added several hours on the travel time to the north.
Also, I wanted to stay in Thurso because that was one of the recommendations from the Rail people. Unfortunately the hotel there was already full and that was several months ago - so I searched what I could online and found (what passed for) a hotel in the small town of Keiss - near Wick. The train stopped in Wick so I figured we were ok - um - guess again. Every vacation needs one (or two) bad days these were ours!
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Traveling by train in the UK is the way to go - you don't have to worry about driving on the "wrong" side of the road and the public transportation system is amazing. I can't understand why we can't figure that out here. I would love to commute to work by train instead of driving every day! |
 |
Traveling through the Highlands
The country is as beautiful as it is desolate. Here again we lucked out as far as weather. I've read that the trip through the Highlands of Scotland is usually pretty drab because of the fog that is almost constant in the area. But these pictures give you the idea of the country - the first thing we noticed was no trees.
 |
 |
Next Page - our "hotel" in Keiss