Patti and Wayne's Grand Adventure: Ring Around the Country, Part 11

Friday, June 15, 2018

We spent the night in the Tom Eachainn B&B in Ballachulish. This is just off the coast road on the way to Glencoe. We walked into town to the local pub for dinner where we had steak and scallops. Yum...

After a great breakfast we took a drive on the A82 loop through the highlands. Absolutely beautiful.

Rushing waterfalls had lots of water as it has been raining

The hills get enough snow to support a ski area in the winter.

Then it was off to Oban for a distillery tour. Oban a picturesque fishing village that grew up around the distillery. Then we drove south to Inverary.

You never knew what you would see around the next corner.

This is the 18th century, Gothic-style Clan Campbell castle home in Inverary. It looks like something out of Sleeping Beauty or Beauty and the Beast

It even has china!

The weapons display was impressive

We were headed back to the A82 and Lock Lomand when an accident closed the highway creating a 27 mile diversion on to itty-bitty side roads. We spent more than 2 hours stuck in traffic. The diversion ended at Dumbarton, so we found a hotel and called it a day. Good thing we had picked up Scotch in Oban!

Saturday June 16, 2018

We left Dumbarton and headed south past Glasgow and down to Carlisle where we go off the motorway and headed east to Hadrians Wall. It poured the entire day driving, but cleared a bit at the wall.

We started at the Roman Army Museum. We learned a lot abut the live of a Roman soldier. Much of the UK was under Roman control from 43 BC to 410 AD. When Hadrian was emperor (117-138) he visited most of the roman territories. He decided that it would be too hard to hold any additional land so he had his (bored) soldiers build a wall along the northern border in Roman Britannia. It took about 6 years (122-128 AD) and was 80 roman miles long, about 72 modern miles.