Consider five days, five different picturesque towns, the Scottish highlands, and self-driving. That being exactly what me and my family of four undertook for our summer break.
We started out from the Edinburgh airport, our destination for the night being Pitlochry, a tiny Victorian town lying on the river Tummel, and crossed the Boundary Fault into the highlands. In addition to the visible geographical change as we travelled across, the area is culturally distinguishable from the lowlands, and of course the variation in whiskey production and flavour.
The slight, mid-June drizzle was our constant companion amidst the reticent and prodigious mountains, only enhancing the journey’s dream like quality. We took a slight detour into the Grampian mountains, one of the three major ranges in the highlands, if only to extend the quota of driving for the day. Interestingly, the name is owed to a typesetter's mistake back in the 15th century, adapted from the incorrect 'Grampius' instead of 'Graupius'. Throughout, it was as if you knew what was coming after every twist and turn on the road but it still possessed the ability to render us speechless as we crossed it, one breathtaking scene after another. Detours and mistakes are what make life memorable, right? I apologise for my philosophical takes, but that is precisely what a place like this does to you.