Colorful landscape of Scotland I

„Vast grey land covered with desolate heathlands and constantly beaten by wind and rain; the mountain tops hidden in the clouds low above the horizon and dense mist crawling up onto the hillsides; cold stone walls castellating medieval towns; Skye Island is the most beautiful place in that land; sheep are everywhere...“ This was image in my head when somebody was talking about Scotland. How wrong I was (except of the sheep :-) I realized during our three-weeks trip to Scotland in May and June. Scotland, the land that some English consider to be something more like wilderness somewhere far North than an equivalent part of the British Kingdom and it is not only the different accent of the Scots but maybe also a little envy because Scotland is a jewel of Europe!

The first thing that surprised me was the extent of Scotland – as I mentioned earlier, this land has almost the same area as Czech Republic but thanks to its variability, narrow winding roads and landscape where you just have to stop every mile and take delight in watching that beauty, this land appears to be huge! Another specialty of Scotland are the amazingly beautiful, maybe even kitschy sandy beaches – I can imagine that if the cold wind did not blow even at the hottest summer days here and the sea was ten degrees warmer, this might be the same sort of destination as places like Azores or Mallorca. But this is what fascinates me on Scotland – vast white sandy beaches with beautiful bays but you do not see a single person – well I saw one swimming in the sea but that was my wife and believe me, she would be able to jump into the sea even at the North Pole :-). To fully enjoy the Scottish coast requires nice weather and we were more than lucky! Although Scotland is rather known as a land of rain a mist, we had clear sky through all the three weeks, just one or two days the sky was a little overcast; every time it rained in Scotland at that time it was always in other places that where we were! On the other hand doing landscape photography with the sharp light from the sun right above the head is not the best case...but those unforgettable evenings with sunsets over the seascape...just amazing!

To come back to my old perception of Scotland - I had to break some of my own myths:

1) Castles and fortification – yes, you will find many castles in Scotland but in most cases those are pseudo-romanic or pseudo-gothic buildings not older than 200 years located in the middle of well-maintained gardens. There are not that many of those genuine old historic sites as I thought and it is always good to look for the right places in guidebooks before your visit. When you are in Scotland you have to go to Edinburgh to experience its ancient stone streets and dark nooks – here the history still lives!

2) The Isle of Skye is beautiful but if you leave out Cuillin Mountains on South, there is nothing really special about this island compared to the rest of Scotland. Now imagine that this piece of land is one of the prime destination for most tourists and it gets really overcrowded in a season and you end up with the same finding as we did – you can find hundreds of much more interesting and I dare to say that even more beautiful places in Scotland. We found such places along the coast in Northwest and Isle of Mull was also unforgettable – but that comes next time, today I present few pictures from the „mainland“.

3) The bad weather myths...well maybe those are not myths, maybe we were just lucky to have such a splendid sunny conditions most of the time we were in Scotland. For me this trip was the best trip in my life so far and it is also thanks to the great weather we had. We must go back one day – the landscape is just fascinating and if you want to ask what is so special there, then I say it is a land where everybody can find its own piece of paradise, untouched and unknown place or just a view that has not been seen by anybody else before – this makes Scotland a jewel of Europe for me...

The pictures presented in this article have been taken along the whole coast of Scotland during our drive from Aberdeen to Inverness, further north to Castletown and west towards the NW tip of Scotland, then back south, along the Isle of Skye towards Mull and back across the mainland to Edinburgh.