Steve went out early to try to take some pictures of the sunrise over Glenfinnan, but the sun didn't cooperate. Therefore, after a wonderful, made-to-order breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon (they eat back bacon in the UK--it's meatier and so tasty), and toast, we returned to Glenfinnan one last time in hopes that we'd see the steam train. It worked! We had only been there maybe five minutes when we heard the engine chugging along. There were two other couples who had the same idea as us, but I'm not sure how long they'd been waiting. We'd really timed it perfectly, which was especially nice since it was beginning to drizzle a bit. Seeing the steam train made it feel a little more like we were watching The Hogwarts' Express.
We drove through Glen Coe on our journey to Edinburgh. It was still pretty rainy--sometimes ridiculously so--but the scenery was still breathtaking.
There were scads of thin waterfalls like this one.
Steve had read about the Drummond Castle Gardens, which Queen Victoria had once declared, "One of the finest formal gardens in Europe," so we decided to check them out for ourselves. Thanks to our trusty GPS, it looked like we could find our way easy enough. Unfortunately, we came upon an accident, so traffic was being rerouted. That meant we had to try to figure out a different route. The GPS ended up taking us out in the middle of nowhere on more two-way, one-lane roads. Finally, it claimed that we'd arrived, yet we were out in the middle of nowhere. We were about to turn around, but I suggested we drive just a little further. Sure enough, out of nowhere, just a few feet ahead, we saw a sign pointing towards Drummond Castle. We followed the road and sure enough, there it was. Scotland truly has castles anywhere and everywhere. It's insane. The gardens were pretty amazing, and fortunately, we arrived just as the rain was subsiding.
These were the vegetable gardens. You can see the greenhouse behind them, and there were several varieties of roses growing beside it.
Unfortunately, the gigantic peacocks (I think we counted at least five or six) were all perching close to the restricted side of the castle, so we could never get a good picture of them. It's okay, though, because from what we could tell, it looked like they were molting anyway. Maybe that's why they were all hiding--their pride had been wounded. They were seriously huge, though, with ridiculously long quills.
You can't really see it in this picture, but off to the left, there were a bunch of sheep grazing in the field. It was perfect.
This will give you a better idea of what the roads were like. Every once in a while, a huge tractor would appear out of nowhere.
When we found the main road, it began to pour again. We also realized that somewhere in our search for the gardens, we'd left the Highlands behind and were now in the Lowlands. It was slightly odd how it just seemed to happen out of nowhere. We pressed on towards Edinburgh, settled into our hotel, and then went out again to explore. It was still rainy, and because we'd decided to take our time on the way there, we arrived after Edinburgh Castle had closed to the public for the day. However, we walked around and took some pictures anyway.
We stopped at a pub called Shakespeare's for a bite to eat before returning to our hotel. Rather tired from all our travels, we are content to relax in our room for a few hours before flying home in the morning. It has been a truly memorable adventure, and we can't wait to return!
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