Thursday 8th -- to Glencoe -- morning

It's Saturday, really but I'm still posting for Thursday. I have an hour before breakfast, I'll see how far I get... So:

The sun rises ridiculously early. I don't know how early, I sleep till 6:30. Deb is up a bit earlier but not much. We both feel better for a good night's sleep.

Our hotel is B&B so we go downstairs for breakfast -- at 8am when it starts. It's a full breakfast, Deb has eggs and bacon, I have eggs and haggis. Hey! we're in Scotland! Plus cereal and toast and such to fill the gaps.

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By mid morning we are ready to go... somewhere. I have loaded areas of geocaches but the GPS is in Deb's case, still missing. I pick an area with no pre-loaded caches so that we will not be saying, If only we had the GPS. We set the GPS for Glencoe and drive...

Set the GPS? Yes. It's the caching GPS which is missing. We still have the street navigation GPS, it travelled in my (not lost) backpack to be easily available for use in the rented car. We also have my running GPS which I wore on my wrist so that I could tell the time. Aaaahhhh, the technology :-)

I look at tourist maps, see a vaguely familiar name. Set the gps for Glencoe, I say. And we're off.

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From Killin we drive a few km back the way we arrived. Then we join the A82. An easy road -- packed with traffic.

For a while it's okay. Then we reach the scenic wonders and it's tourists everywhere. Glencoe is a village (and tourist trap). Glen Coe is (I think) a famous beauty spot. And it is beautiful. In a semi-spectacular way. It's a glen, of course :-) A broad valley with lochs in the low parts and mountains to the sides. At the high point of the low part of the glen is Rannoch Moor, a relatively flat area.

I wonder if the lochs overflow? wonders Deb. There's a lot of water lying around. The weather, today, is holding mostly fine. Just enough rain for walking -- with raincoats still missing -- to be risky.

We drive past a beautiful loch. There are cars parked nearby, must be a view from there, we think. So we drive to join those cars. Twenty or thirty cars squeezed into a layby, plus a couple of tourist buses. People with cameras wandering amongst the traffic. Men in kilts calling their passengers back to the buses.

What a pack! And there are several more like it, packed with tourists, as we drive on through the Glen. Plus, more and more traffic forming long queues behind the slower drivers. We are slow. Every so often I pull over to let a line of our "friends" go past. Then wait a while for the chance to get back onto the road.

The scenery is worth seeing. The traffic means that I miss a lot (as driver I like to watch the road). Drivers are very courteous it's just that there are so many of them.

We stop for lunch at the Glencoe Visitor Centre. Along with a carpark-full of other tourists. Though the crowds thin a bit towards the end of our visit. All part of the fun of lunchtime at the height of the Scottish tourist season :-)

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I'll take a break here. In real time it's nearly time for Saturday breakfast...

====    Dr Nick Lethbridge  /  Consulting Dexitroboper
             Agamedes Consulting / Problems? Solved.
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"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away." … Blazing Swan Survival Guide

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dying for you to read my blog: notdotdeaddotyet.blogspot.com.au :-)
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