I must say, we had no real problems. If you are tall or large, you would want to upgrade to the premium seating. Fortunately on our flight, it was only about 60% full so there was lots of room to spread out after the plane took off. It was probably a good thing we ate in Toronto before leaving. The food wasn't great. I selected the pasta which was some sort of macaroni (I think). Only ate a bit. The roll was good.
Very smooth flight and the plane was pretty quiet (an older 767 I believe). We arrived right on time, had a coffee to wake up and went to pick up the rental car. We went through the usual exercise of turning down all of the up-sell items (including GPS rental and an upgrade to a "better" vehicle). After stern warnings of my peril we stuck to our original rental request and made our way to the parking lot. There we were presented with a brand new VW Golf GTI, fully loaded with factory GPS, proximity warning system, adaptive cruise control etc. A really nice car albeit a 6 speed standard. All this for $27CDN a day!
Having the GPS in the car now took the pressure off of trying to find a UK SIM card for my iPhone so I could use it as a GPS and a UK phone. Good thing, as there was no vendor at the airport that was selling SIM cards and I have yet to run into anyone who could direct me to a shop where I could buy one. Another person at the tourist info place told me cell signals are no-existant throughout most of the Highlands anyway.
It was still early in the morning so we decided to explore some of the towns along the shores of Loch Lomond. We carefully set out on the highway ever mindful of keeping left but not too far left. Its amazing how you tend to position your body in the same part of the lane as when you drive on the right side of the road.
Our first stop was the picturesque town of Luss on the west shore of Loch Lomond. Quaint buildings and a beautiful old church.
From there we headed north to the village of Tarbet with a castle-like hotel.
By now the sun had come out and the hills we a stunning green. It apparently has been raining a lot lately. All along the shore you could view Ben Lamond peak to the east providing a beautiful backdrop to the Loch.
After Tarbet we continued on and the road got narrower and narrower. The VW started to feel like a bigger and bigger car! Especially when passing head on with many of the full size lorries on this road.
I had a vision of the Scottish highway engineers having a project meeting... "Angus, how wide should we make the lanes of this road?" Angus says "How wide is a standard large lorry?" "Seven feet ten inches you say?", "Well then, eight feet will do nicely, no need to spend all that extra money on pavement or a shoulder". "We can use that money to make it look better and put a stone wall down each side right against the pavement". Needless to say, a few close calls with the wall today but I'm getting the hang of it. Chris will be wearing a full blackout mask in the passenger seat if we get on another road like that again.
We got to the top of the Loch at Ardlui and turned around. Great scenery once I got to look at it.
No trip would be complete without a hydroelectric plant. Here is the Loch Sloy Generating Station, a 152 MW peaking plant built in the late 1940's. It is the largest conventional hydroelectric plant in Scotland.
Our next stop was Balmara at the souther end of the Loch. A popular stop for hikers doing the West Highland Trail. We stopped at our first pub for some grub and a half pint. No full pint until I have hung up the car keys for the day!
We checked into our country B&B just outside of Drymen and took the opportunity to rest before heading out to supper. This is the view from our bedroom window.
Our B&B host recommended the Old Mill Pub in Killearn for supper.
We took the short drive there and were treated to a fabulous steak dinner and by the time we were finished, had met everyone at the bar. Got lots of good travel advice, some of it I could understand.
No comments:
Post a Comment