Monday, July 31, 2023
Scotland: Moncur Castle
Saturday, July 29, 2023
Scotland: Isle of Skye
Hiking with 3 small kids can be tricky. Sometimes you gotta pick your spots and know when to trudge on as a group and when to base camp it and take turns going solo. This was a take-turns moment, thankfully our little basecamp had an amazing view and an equally amazing boulder that kept the kids very occupied.
After the Isle of the Skye we headed off to a small fishing village called Plockton- our bnb host recommended it to 'go see the real Scottish countryside without all the tourists'. It was quite cute and lovely and decided to support their local economy and go on a boat ride that was guaranteed to be free if we saw seals. Fortunately or unfortunately, depends on who you ask, we saw seals. Plockton was a nice little stop for us even if we ended up cutting it all short due to getting rained on and very wet.
The Scottish Highlands were so pretty it was hard to not stop at every turn and corner to take in the views.
Friday, July 28, 2023
Scotland: Balmoral
On the road again! We covered a lot of ground this trip, but Harry Potter made good company for us on the road and the kids enjoyed watching shows from the iPad. This stretch of the trip we stayed down the road from the Balmoral castle. The hotel itself and area just had a queenly feel to them, beautiful but different than our last stay. The kids enjoyed the grounds and the playground on-site. The evening here after putting the kids to bed, we pulled up the episode of “The Queen: Balmoral Castle” on the iPad and watched it from our queen-size bathtub together and was a memorable night. The next day we went hiking on the Balmoral estate (they Royal family have a whopping 50,00 acres) which was very cool to see the terrain that was filmed for 'The Queen'. The hike was really nice and very not crowded which made it even better.