Day 1 - Saturday

I'm going to give you a day by day account of my holiday. I'll start with Day 1 - Saturday 6th September. I woke up to the most horrendous weather imaginable. It was raining like it had never rained for years.

Travelling in the car along the A68 towards Hexham (not far from home) was a nightmare. I didn't need a car, I needed a speedboat. When i went through the very deep pools of water that lay on the road, the water gushed over the windscreen & the top of the car nearly making me stall the engine. This went on for quite a few miles, but, thank goodness, further on up the road it started to clear & then near Glasgow the clouds turned to white fluffy ones with blue skies.

Ballachulish (pronounced bal-a-who-lish) where I was staying is a small village about 1 mile away from Glencoe, surrounded by beautiful mountains and Loch Leven. When I got to my room in the small b&b & unpacked my luggage, I decided to explore the village and walk along the lochside. In the middle of the loch were 2 islands. The larger one was called the Isle of the dead which was the graveyard of the clan McCleod from years gone by. The smaller island was called the Isle of Dispute. It was there that people of different clans who had a dispute with one another were taken by boat and left there till they had sorted out their differences.

The photograph above shows the Isle of the dead with the smaller Isle to the right hand side. Unfortunately you cannot see the water between them as I couldn't get a good viewpoint further over for the trees.