Scotland - Island Explorer. Days 1 & 2

I have been busting to edit these pictures and post them! 
Georgia and I returned last night from doing a 7 day 'Island Explorer' tour with Haggis Tours around Scotland.

It was a fantastic time exploring Scotland's finest scenic drives and hearing the magical tales of the country's history. The trip consisted of SO much (hence the 1pm sleep in today…) and we spent the 7 days cliff walking, mountain hiking, seeing mountains upon mountains, oceans and glaciers, standing stones, tombs, castles, ruins, animals and delicious food. Some of the highlights we saw were often from movie scenes as well including Harry Potter, Skyfall 007 and Monty Python. Completely understandable why scenery as beautiful as Scotland would be chosen to film in… everywhere is breathtaking.

Personally the highlight for me were the incredible cliffs that I would have never seen if I was at home in Australia. Even the way that there are no barriers or rules and kilometres of green fields and fresh ocean cliffs were just incredible. The air was the freshest of all and I could've stayed wandering around the sandstone edges for hours.

We had great tour guides - a group of about 13 travellers at the beginning with two guides who are incredibly knowledgable about the history of Scotland and literally live to inform people like us about it all. The weather was rainy and overcast in the Highlands but as the Scottish kept saying - it's not raining, it's "liquid sunshine"… and it's not overcast, it's "atmospheric". 

I'll caption as many of the pictures as I can- but I didn't write down exactly where we went so I'll just have to do my best.
These pictures are from days 1 and 2.

Our bus for the week…

St. Andrews - a quaint town where the game of golf was invented

St Andrews - these are the remains of an old cathedral in the town which still stands and is also now a cemetery. It is HUGE and you can still walk along the outlines of the side walls and through the entranceway. Such good architecture!

Local Pub dog

Road tripping through Cairngorms National Park in the highlands of Scotland

This is the general scenery when travelling through the Highlands - incredible snow tipped alps, rivers, waterfalls, forests, sheep, cows, horses…  

Troopers

Found these beautiful horses at the Culloden Battlefield and Visitor Centre

The Culloden Battlefield and Visitor Centre - I was so in love with this place. There is an original battlefield in place with the grounds of where a battle took place and also a Visitor Centre on the grounds. The architecture of the Visitors Centre just took all my attention, I love it! The contrast between the incredible natural scenery of the surrounding mixed with the modern, clean lined architecture of the building and wooden panelling with reflective glass that shot back all the mountains and fields straight back to you was so good.

The Visitors Centre

The Highlands of Scotland