The plan for day 4 of our Scotland tour: first go west to drive the spectacular Applecross mountain road, then head east to visit Nessie at the lake of Loch Ness.
The Applecross Peninsula mountain road, while running on fumes
The mountain road around the Applecross Peninsula is a beautiful single track road. First slowly going up the mountain, towards Applecross, then downhill up to Lochcarran.
Sadly, I spent most of the mountain road looking at my fuel gauge. You see, we left the hotel with not much fuel left, with the promise of a fuel station “just down the road”. We must have missed that one, because we ended up running on fumes halfway around the the peninsula. Luckily, it was mostly downhill from there, so we “played Prius” up until Lochcarron, where we could finally fill up again. Phew…
Not the best circumstances for enjoying the most beautiful road in the area, so we decided we just had to go back later to re-do this road at full speed.
Filling up in Lochcarran
We made it to Lochcarran (B on the map), phew, so we filled up with fuel, then parked the Astons at the Loch to get some coffee.
Lunch at the Eilean Donan Castle
Next stop was the Eilean Donan Castle (C on the map), where we had lunch. Well, not at the castle itself but at the rather basic self-serve restaurant at the foot of the castle bridge.
Great place to take pictures though:
Loch Ness
After lunch, we continued towards today’s final destination: Loch Ness. The lake of Loch Ness is a very long and narrow lake, so we decided to drive around the lake on the east side, to see if we could get near the water somewhere. However, most of the roads are away from the lake. This is as close as we got:
Caught speeding
While driving the east side of the lake with five Aston Martins, we got caught speeding. Apparently, these guys had lasered us doing just over 40 mph right after the town border (where the limit is 30 mph). Luckily, we got away with a warning and a “Nice cars!” comment 🙂
Quick video of the “incident”:
Back to Kinlochewe
With no police in sight, it was time to speed up again and return to the Torridon Hotel.
Here’s five of us, driving the last stretch towards Kinlochewe, a very nice winding piece of tarmac, with great views:
One Comment: