Scotland: Glencoe
MY FAVORITE.
Here, i felt that Scotland just made it to my top countries list with New Zealand. I took a bus directly to Glencoe visitor center. From there, I walked a few miles east..
And I am super glad that I walked instead of finding a car, because I would have missed all the photo ops and some of the beautiful scenery! And ofc the selfie moments.
About an hour or so walk away, during which you can see creeks and waterfalls, there is a hotel near Signal Rock.
At the hotel I asked about the specific filming location used in Harry Potter, and the helpful lady at the counter told me it was about 500 meters west. Of course there isn’t any signs of their having filmed there, but I thought I would be able to recognize the surroundings.
lol, nope. I walked past it multiple times, and walked so far. I ended up finding a horse to pet:
And the lake that you can see from Hagrid’s hut:
But about an hour and a half later, a hike through shrubbery, and a lot of researching online, I found the precise location!
Here’s what it looks like in the movie:
After enjoying the Harry Potter fangirl moments, I hiked around the area to visit Signal Rock, because it seemed like it’s supposed to be famous and grand. But I got there and realized its just some unidentifiable location, and only important for its history.. 4/10 would not recommend.
in order to get on the bus to get to Oban, I had to walk 2 ish hours to another small town called Ballachulish. Scotland was way colder than I expected, so as soon as the sun went down, I couldn’t do anything outside.
I got there super early because I was nervous about missing the bus, so I walked around and visited the lake thats in this slate.. park.. thing where the people of Ballachulish used to work. Theres supposed to be a lot of history but….
this place didn’t have much to do.
The whole walk was along the coast of the lake Leven and I stayed out to see the sunset! The best views were when I was on the bus, but again the glare was so bad that I got disgusting photos.. You’ll have to take my word for it. It was beautiful.
