Lindsay and I had loved our trip into the Highlands with David and Marlene, it made us want to see even more!
So we booked ourselves a spot on the Macbackpackers Highlands tour. It was awesome. The end.
Ok, ok I shall show you what we did and saw…we didn’t take many photos though, only 4GB worth in 2 days.
We got up extra early to head into town to catch the bus, we left the laptop and iphones sitting on the table in the kitchen, ran back for them, then ran to the wrong street to meet the bus, ran to the correct st, and made it to the tour bus with seconds to spare. We hopped on the bus all hot and sweaty found some spots and tried to look calm and collected while being driven back the way we had run, to the street we had gone to by accident to pick up more passengers. On the bus was a group of Chinese students, a Korean man, an Indian man, a Sweedish girl, an argumentitve hungarian/american couple, an american man in a utility kilt, the long haired kilt wearing scottish driver and a hobbit/Plane crash survivor/Canadian guy. Looking around I knew we were in for a good trip.
The first thing we learnt on the bus was the moment the engine on the bus started the chinese students fell asleep, which halved the driver’s audience. The moment the driver would start talking about the area we were in, history, building etc the Indian man would whip out his phone and speak very loudly in Hindi.
Our first stop was St Andews, we had an hour to wander around and grab some lunch.
St Andrews is by the Sea, and was where the film, Chariots of Fire was filmed. There was a long beach which was used in the movie, just to the left of this photo but my photo uploading application felt that uploading the photo of that beach was asking a little bit too much of it…and decided to ignore my request to include that photo.
So picture a long sandy beach, with lots of haze on it.
Then Lindsay and I walked up to the headland to see the ruins of an Old Cathedral that was used by Pilgrims who had come to learn about Christianity and St Andrew.
It cost 6 pounds each to get in to see the ruins. Being the brilliant backpackers that we are, we held the camera through the fence and saved ourselves a fortune.
This next photo is where the kitchen used to be, until a particularly stormy night reloacted it into the ocean.
We countinued up around the headland and found the unins of another Cathedral, which has now become a graveyard. The cathedral would have been huge, the ruins stretched so far, it was amazing! (also it had the potential to host the most epic game of hide and seek ever)
the graves dated back as far at the 1600s, and as recent at 2002
these coffins? were once under the floor of the council chambers where the leaders of the town would meet.
These are where we assumed the leaders would have sat for their meetings
We then walked down back towards the ocean and to the St Andrews Golf course, the first and oldest golf course.
This building is where all the rules for Golf are decided upon, all coutries follow these rules, except the USA.
It was time to hop back onto the bus, and head past the tallest Hedge which has a record in the Guinness World Records!
it is made out of birch trees and is trimmed every 10 years, by 4 men over 6 weeks!
Our next stop was in a little town, where we chilled out by the river
it was so beautiful and warm and fresh, we could have happily stayed there all day!
We came across our 3rd ruins of a church for the day, and come to the conclusion that Scotland + the upkeep of churchs = fail
It wouldn’t be a blog post if I didn’t include a photo of me doing something strange:
here I doing a Chariots of Fire run out of the Abby.
Back onto the bus and further into the Highlands
We then stopped at some standing stones called Clava Cairns, Cairn mean a pile of rocks.
The Cairns date back to the Bronze age, and no one is sure why they are there, what their purpose is and who built them.
But they were so fascinating, it felt like being in a fairytale.
I tried to work out how to go back in time through the spilt in a standing stone to find Jamie Fraser:
But I decided to stay in 2009 and with Lindsay instead
actually, the spilt in the stone was out of order…but don’t tell Lindsay that 
Once we had lived out our fairytale dreams we turned around to find out all the other tourists from our bus has disappeared! We went back to the bus,
and saw everyone else running down the road excitedly
they had seen some cows, which were apprently more exciting then mysterious, ancient standing stones!
After rounding up the suddenly awake and excited tourists we all hopped back onto the bus and were driven to Culloden . It was very impressive. It looks like a big marshy field, with mist hanging around it, but you can certainly sense that something terrible had happened there.
This is the memorial that was put up in the last century, note the wildflowers that have grown on the top of the memorial.
Most Clans have a memorial stone at the field.
The field has not changed much since the battle, except to become less marshy.
After the emotional visit to Culloden it was time to head into Inverness and to check into our hostel.
We went out for dinner with the driver, the american guy and sweedish girl.
The utility kilt and doc martin wearing, tatoo bearing american missionairy turned out to be a really nice guy, and shared Lindsay’s and my obsession with photography. The scottish driver, Lindsay and I share a similar sense of humour, so had great fun telling funny stories. After dinner we went to a pub called Tooting Annies, where a scottish folk band was setting up. Thats when the Canadian Hobbit turned up! Ok, well he wasn’t a hobbit, but he is the spitting image of Dom Monaghan from Lord of the Rings and Lost. The sweedish girl and I kept reminding him of it too. I had actually seen him at Edinburgh castle 2 days earlier and I thought it was Dom Monoghan and wouldn’t let Lindsay look at him just in case it was Dom! But he wasn’t in Lost or Lord of the Rings so he was just a nice Canadian guy.
I made new best friends with 2 old scottish men, who, due to the loud music and their thick accents I was unable to understand but I think were very nice. It was very hot and very crowded so we said goodbye to all our new friends and made our way back to the hostel for an early night.