📸 Glenfinnan, Scotland

8 min readNov 11, 2018

After some hiking and exploring in the highlands, we headed west to chase the sun. We noticed that Isle of Skye had some sun forecasted so we rearranged our plan to accommodate (the joys of last minute planning!)

We arrived to our cottage in Glenfinnan and had a busy schedule ahead of us. Some castles, a distillery, a trip to see the famous Hogwarts Express, and of course, a hike in the beautiful highlands were all on our agenda.

Our Airbnb was so awesome and got to enjoy a relaxing* few days while living next to the beautiful Ben Nevis mountain. We also learned that the Scots call big mountains “Munro”, and that when you hike them, you “bag a Munro”

*with the exception of the 4am wakeup call when our car alarm went off…..

See more on our website : www.alittledetour.ca🌏✈️👫

Although it was cloudy, it never rained during our hikes.

We decided to take up our traveling friend Lucus on his recommendations and stopped by the Ben Nevis Distillery.

When you first start the tour at Ben Nevis, they have this very charming movie with a Scotsman explaining the history of Scotch in a very entertaining way.

We had a great guide who befriended us as he had been to Calgary and loves Alberta!

Checking out the distillery process — this place is one of the oldest in Scotland!

Our guide was so nice, and we got a few more glasses than we had paid for. Theresa had one glass, Oli was driving… so Maeghan had a very funny afternoon.

Meeting the distillery animals. This guy came to visit when Maeghan started calling him.

The rain had just stopped right before we got to our Airbnb.

Chocolate, Wine, The Good Place on Netflix and a fire… we had a great night!

Checking out the Glenfinnan viewpoint of the war monument and train !

The Hogwart’s Express famously drove on these tracks in Harry Potter!

Then we headed to Steall Falls — Where the Goblet of Fire was filmed. It was 11 degrees during our hike and had simply beautiful scenery.

We didn’t think we would see the fall colours — but we totally lucked out with green, red, yellow and orange :)

Then as we headed to our next destination, we went to the Eilean Donan Castle.

Eilean Donan is a small tidal island where three sea lochs meet, Loch Duich, Loch Long and Loch Alsh, in the western Highlands of Scotland. Several movies have been filmed here — from James Bond (The World Is Not Enough) to travel shows.

But the coolest part of the castle is that it was purchased by a Canadian, physician Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae in the early 1900’s.

They renovated to bring back some of the early beauty. It was originally housed by the Mackenzie clan in partnership with the McRae’s. They had a very touching memorial to John McCrae and all the McCrae’s who lost their life in battle.

He is also well known for writing a poem I grew up reciting every year on remembrance day with my Opa — “In Flanders Field”.