Al Trujillo
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 p.1 #7 · Solo or Small Tour Operators in Scotland? | |
gdanmitchell wrote:
Well, yes. ;-)
We flew out of the US on May 4 and were at Inverness on the morning of May 7. (We flew into London, which some might quarrel with, stained one night, then took the overnight train to Inverness the next night. After a brief stay there, we were on Sky on May 9. We had three nights there, then two each at Ullapool and Ultanahara, which we used as bases for traveling north up the coast and then across the northern coast.. (Most people would probably not choose Ultanahara — I can tell you more if you are interested.) Aside from that, on this trip we spent a night in Inverness and a couple of nights in Aberdeen.
We did not include Edinburgh or Glasgow this time, since we've been there before and we were more interested in places that were new to us and more rural.
Crowds were not bad (though that's a relative term these days) on Skye or or in the northwest. You'll read horror stories about crowds (and driving) on Skye, but we didn't really encounter that. We were always able to find parking at each place we stopped, though there wasn't much left when we stopped at the trial to "The Old Man of Storr."
Weather is always an issue in Scotland — and often the British Isles in general — and we certainly had our share. We had at least some precipitation virtually every day, and we never had an actual clear day. That, of course, impacted photography. Also, seeing photographs from people who visited a couple of weeks later, I can say that the countryside, with few exceptions, had not really greened up quite yet.
It was also surprisingly cold. We had overnight lows close to 40 F and occasionally into the low 30s. We saw fresh snow on the tops of some of the taller peaks. When we asked the locals, they all said it had been unusually cold.
One factor about getting around there, particularly in these more rural areas, is that many of the roads are single-tracks, sometimes including some fairly main roadways. I'm fine with that — I drive on gravel single-track in the Eastern Sierra, Utah, and Death Valley all the time. But here there can be a lot more traffic... including camper vans, occasionally someone pulling a trailer, deliver trucks. It is relatively easy to figure out the rules for dealing with this, but I imagine that it could get pretty frustrating in the high season.
(If you rent a vehicle for these roads, the usual advice is to rent what they call a "compact SUV" over there. This is not what we think of as a SUV in the States — we're talking about a smallish hatchback with AWD. On the narrow roads, especially when passing, you'll be glad to NOT be driving something larger.)
Another thing to consider, for folks traveling close to the solstice (and May is getting there) is that the days are very, very long. Getting up before sunrise means getting up extremely early, and if you then are out for and past sunset, your day will be extremely long!
I think that could be one advantage of your October time frame, and I'm guessing that later in the month the traffic diminishes... and the sunrise/sunset times are more amendable to photography.
One thing that will be different there in October is that there are not all that many deciduous trees. As you probably know, much of the highlands is barren of trees or nearly so, and where you do see a "forest" it is likely managed for timber and consists of coniferous trees. So fall color will be a different experience than we are familiar with in the US. Having not been there at that time myself, I don't know if the smaller pants on that barren ground provide color.
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You live in the western US as do I so we know a thing or two about distances between experiences. I suspect the drives in the UK are shorter, but take as much time because they appear to be smaller roads. So, if given enough time (10-12 days) would it be possible to visit the Lake District in the UK and then proceed north into Scotland? I see the YT videos the UK folk post about the beautiful deciduous forests in parts of the UK and I wonder if I could combine both visits?
Al
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