Moonrise Kingdom

The Scottish Highlands Make Me Want to Live in a Tent on a Bay

Morgan Jones
Jul 21, 2017 · 4 min read

Today we went on a tour of the Highlands. We went around Loch Lomond, into the Trossachs, up into Oban, and then to Glencoe. Scotland has been way colder than I expected so I guess I should probably get this out of the way, I stole my mom’s coat, and this is a pretty accurate representation of how I felt:

swallowed by a rain coat and still freezing, stolen from my mom’s facebook

When we got started on the tour, we first stopped at the south east end of Loch Lomond for pictures and coffee. It was pretty, but nothing compared to what was coming. Everything is so green. If we could return for a moment to the ‘picture the most vibrant green’ section from the other day, yeah, forget that, it’s greener. We drove for a while — the tour ran from 8:30am-7pm — and the guide rambled on for a while about the history of the clans, and when he wasn’t talking played a lot of Unfortunate Traditional Scottish Music. This consists of mostly bagpipes. They lose a star in my rating solely for this reason. Then we arrived at a really cute coastal town just below a castle. No one seemed too keen on getting out to walk around it, though, and we all went to tour the castle. I need to stop going inside castles. I’m always disappointed. Too much opulence, and it’s not even pretty. Just money being thrown around for no reason, and it could house so many people, but instead like two people live there. Cool. The grounds were pretty, so I’ll give them that. In an act of conscious rebellion, I took the “please keep off the grass” signs to mean “please run through the grass so you can climb these trees.” Monarchy: 0, Morgan: 1. There were also sheep. More sheep. Scotland has an infinite amount of sheep. 🐑🐑🐑

left: castle, right: one of the many trees I climbed

We stopped off at a few more photo opportunities at ruins, and castles, and the like along the way to Oban. But in Oban we stopped for two hours for lunch. Oban is a loch-side holiday town. It was so cute. We stopped into a restaurant called Cuan Mór (koo-an more) and I had a veggie burger and some local Scottish cider. It was really good, the veggie patty was falafel and spinach 😋. Then we walked around the town for a bit, and ended up stopping into an outdoorsy, hiking shop (I, if you couldn’t tell, am not outdoorsy, and subsequently don’t know what to call a store like this) to buy a rain jacket. I was still shivering, and it was starting to rain again. It’s green. It’s nice. I walked along the shore for thirty minutes or so, while my mom sat on a bench along the docks. I was looking for a rock to bring home to Mason, since we brought home rocks from Colorado last time we went, but none of them spoke to me. I kept walking until the rocks turned into mushy seaweed rather than shoreline, and decided it was probably not the best idea to risk the stretch like that to get to the larger outcrop of rocks. Especially because I was wearing vans, which have nonslip soles, but are not foolproof (me, being a fool). We met back at the car at 2:45pm to head to Glencoe.

Òban

Glencoe was incredible. There were huge granite mountains surrounding the car, and it started to rain just as we pulled in. The clouds looked like they were rushing around the tops of the mountains. All throughout the mountains in Scotland, there are tiny waterfalls. It’s all incredible. The green, and the fog, and the mountains, and the glen, it’s amazing. Have I mentioned that it’s green. I can’t get over the color. On the ride through Glencoe, there were a bunch of large stones in the grass around, which had apparently been placed there by the receding glaciers during the last ice age. Very cool (literally). The drive back to Glasgow took us along the entire 24 mile coastline of Loch Lomond. I wish I lived near the water. Scotland is beautiful. If it weren’t so cold I might consider setting up a tent.

Glencoe

P.S. the one reprieve from the bagpipes was, randomly, Notion by Kings of Leon, so here it is

)

Morgan Jones

Written by

twenty-first century woman | student

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