Scottish Highlands and Isle of Skye

This is my third and last blog post about my trip to Scotland few months ago, here you can see blog posts about one of my favourite cities ever, Edinburgh and the city I have visited for the first time after living there about ten years ago, Glasgow. After spending few days in those amazing cities my friend and I rented a car and took a road trip to Scottish Highlands and Isle of Skye. Five days was definitely not enough to explore everything but we did a LOT in those days, I’m talking waking up very early, hiking, taking thousands of photos, enjoying breathtakingly beautiful nature, stopping our car every 5 minutes because there is something beautiful we just HAD to photograph, taking portraits of cutest Scottish sheep and Highland cows, having no internet service, watching sunsets, indulging in comforting Scottish food and black tea, possibly a whiskey (or gin!) or two! 🙂

If you never visited Scotland yet, I highly recommend taking some time to explore the Highlands as the nature there is ‘out of this world’ beautiful and you can really disconnect from the rest of the world for a while and be there present, breathing, taking it all in and feeling free and alive. At least that’s how I felt…

Also, can we say a word or two about the weather. We all know that if you travel to Scotland, you’ll most likely get wet at least few times, I mean rain is something that is just a part of the whole experience and the weather shouldn’t stop you in any plans (as long as it’s safe of course). I learned that still while I lived there because if you would start cancelling trips every time there is a bad weather forecasted, you would never go anywhere trust me. So just make sure you dress appropriately and go wherever you wanted to go! Also, the moody weather and dark clouds are perfect for photography so yaaay, I want to go again! We travelled there in July and since the rest of Europe was going through a heat wave at the time, we really really enjoyed refreshing cooler weather. Yes, it did rain a bit and it would get quite windy too but honestly we didn’t care. We were too busy having a wonderful time!

What would be a visit to Scotland and not having any castle photos, right?! 🙂 So here are two, first one is 13th century Eilean Donan castle that is recognised as one of the most iconic images of Scotland  all over the world and is one of the most visited and important attractions in the Scottish Highlands. Second one is 17th century Braemar castle, an iconic landmark in the heart of the Cairngorms National Park. I was so happy to see there are fields of purple flowers all around the castle so of course me and my friend did a little photo session because, common, how often you can pose in the middle of the purple flowers fields with a gorgeous castle right in front of you?!

Most of the days we enjoyed a typical Scottish breakfast, me a nice hot bowl of porridge with blueberry or blackberry jam and my friend a savoury one with scrambled eggs, black pudding, sausages and beans, all accompanied by strong black tea of course. Which one would you choose? 🙂 Also, have you ever tried haggis, a traditional Scottish dish that is basically  savoury pudding containing sheep’s pluck (heart, liver, and lungs); minced with onion, oatmeal, spices? It’s a real comfort food and it tastes much better than it sounds, I promise!

Here is the second part of our Scottish Highlands tour, a 2-nights stay at Isle of Skye, one of my favourite places I’ve ever visited! I love that island so much and I definitely want to come back and explore more of its mesmerising natural beauty. We did see a lot as we were getting up with a sunrise and spent every possible minute outside hiking, photographing, admiring the dramatic scenery.. One of the things that were definitely on our ‘to do’ list was hiking up the Old Man of Storr and we where so happy to do that, it was a highlight of our whole trip! Specially because we were up very early in the morning so we managed to do the whole hike (in quite strong and cold wind!) and shooting before the first tourists arrived later on in the morning. What a feeling to be up there with those views, wow! So I’ll start with those photos first…

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