Carrbridge

We woke at around 6:30 a.m. having had a decent night's sleep. I awoke a few times in the night but the gentle rocking of the train sent me back to sleep.

Somewhere in the middle of the night we split from half of the train. After we had both showered and changed we walked to the next carriage for our breakfast. We had both selected the 'full Scottish' which was served with some decent coffee and orange juice. Meanwhile we took in the fuse of the Highlands as the train slowly trundled along towards Inverness, stopping every so often to allow another train to pass.

The sky was bright blue and we enjoyed taking in the views. The train arrived into Inverness on time at 8:35 a.m. and after disembarking we purchase tickets for the shorts journey to Inverness airport where we were going to pick up a car.

By 9:30 a.m. we were in our hire car and heading towards our first stop Cawdor Castle, northeast of Inverness. We decided not to pay to enter and instead headed back West to Fort George, an 18th century fortification built to suppress the Scots after the Jacobite Rebellion by King George.

We spent a couple of hours exploring the fort and even managed to see some dolphins in the Moray Firth and a seal moseying about just beyond the shore.

From here we drove around the coast to Chanonry Point, supposedly the best place to see dolphins in the world! We were not successful but we did spend a short amount of time taking in the views.

After grabbing a sandwich for lunch and eating it on some picnic benches overlooking the firth, we drove along towards Loch Ness. We stopped near Drumnadrochit, hoping to be able to see Urquhart castle, but as you weren't able to see it from the road we carried on because all of the tickets were sold.

We carried on along the loch until we reached Fort Augustus where the loch ends and there is a series of lock gates taking vessels between loch Ness and the Caledonian canal.

Having spent a bit of time watching the locks in action we continued our journey back North along the east side of the lock towards Foyers, where our accommodation for the next three nights is.

The east side of the lock is much quieter than the West and we soon arrived in Foyers having driven through some beautiful landscape.

We were a little bit early and couldn't check in until 4:30 p.m. after which we dropped our things in our room and wondered down the hill to another hotel where we had a drink overlooking the loch from our position high on the hillside.

We returned up the hill to our guest house where we had another drink on the balcony and then food in the bar.

We were back in our room before 9:00 and both feeling very tired so we had an early night ready for another day exploring on Wednesday.Read more