What's a trip without an itinerary? An Adventure!

While I'm on revision break, I thought I'd let you know how my wee trip went.
I travelled with three of my friends around part of Scotland and we went to Stonehaven, Aberdeen and Inverness. We had sorted ourselves an itinerary, and had originally planned to visit approximately 6-7 castles. Well, Jane left the itinerary in her room and our adventures began from there!

We got to Stonehaven station properly, and then from there we had to walk to Dunnottar Castle which was on the coast about two miles away from the town. When we were almost at the end of our hike, it started to rain. Rain while walking on a windy cliff is not a good thing and its even worse when the rain is cold and feels like it's slapping you. That only lasted a few minutes, thankfully.  The castle ruins were nice and it was sunny while we walked around in there. We spent three hours there instead of our scheduled two (and that's not including the time it took to walk there).  We had lunch at a cute little restaurant by the beach and then set off for Aberdeen.

Us with Dunnottar Castle in the background

The weather decided that it really didn't like us and it started to rain again. The train to Aberdeen was fairly quick and uneventful.

 When we got to Aberdeen, we decided to scrap visiting the two other castles that were scheduled for the day and just find our hostel before we had dinner. But since we had no itinerary we had to first figure out the address of the hostel. I ended up misreading address and maps and we got well acquainted with Aberdeen's Union Street. We ended up having dinner at a McDonald's on Union Street.  At half nine ish we found our hostel finally. It was too late do much so we just settled into bed. We made ourselves a cooked breakfast the next morning and set off for Inverness by bus.  We were intending to stop off on the way and see Huntly Castle, but we were too tired. After the 4 hour bus journey, we finally made it to Inverness.

Inverness and the River Ness

Inverness, I have to say, is the most beautiful city I've seen so far. Maybe it's just because the weather was so good while we were there, but the scenery was breathtaking! One day, when I have enough money, I think I want to get myself a summer home in Inverness. We had our "lunch" on the castle grounds at half five. We sat on a bench overlooking the Rive Ness and shared our meal with a seagull. We named him "Alfredo". The Inverness castle is currently used as a courthouse and for some other government purposes, so we didn't get to see the inside. But the outside is lovely.

We spent the rest of the evening walking along the banks of the River and enjoyed the beauty of nature all around us. We ended the evening in a pub in town where there was live folk music playing.

The next day we set off for Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle on a tour bus and cruise. We got a 30 min cruise down the Loch and got off at Urquhart Castle. We walked around those ruins a while, saw a short film about its history at the visitor centre and went back to Inverness by the bus. It was beautiful. Loch Ness was so amazing, the scenery, the air, the freshness, all lovely. It made me really happy.

Urquhart Castle with Loch Ness behind it

We had lunch at an all you can eat Chinese buffet restaurant where we stuffed ourselves and spent the rest of the afternoon in the Inverness castle museum and later sunning ourselves on the grassy slopes below the Castle itself.

Then it was time to pack up and take the train back. The trip was a great experience and I'm glad I did it. It was teh first time I'd ever been in hostels and the also the Scottish countryside is so pretty, especially in the spring. Plus the fact that the sun doesn’t set till ten is a huge bonus. So much more time to explore!