My road trip through the Highlands of Scotland was one of my best trips so far. The people who have been to this part of the world will definitely agree with me that it is a beautiful place. And Glen Etive, even more so!
MJ and I rented a car from Kendal and drove up to Fort Williams then back down to Edinburg.
We started driving from Kendal, passed through Glasgow for lunch and arrived at Loch Lomond. The drive to Loch Lomond was picturesque with a lot of trees (or forests) and mountains in the line of sight. Definitely a big difference from either Dubai or Singapore!
We took a break from driving by visiting the Balloch Castle, which I have to say, wasn’t that impressive. It is not a big castle and visitors are restricted to only the public areas. The park in which it is situated overlook part of Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park. So it was a good spot to stretch the legs before we continued to Fort William.
The scenery driving towards Glencoe and Fort William was amazing! The car travelling on a single-lane traffic each way, curving along the contours of the mountains gave me a sense of peace and happiness at the same time.
At times, we see trees lining along both sides of the road or look out to the lake on the other side. Some other times, the views open up to mountains right in front of us. It was like a scene taken out of the movies and it was surreal. I was literally going ‘wooowwww……’ as I was driving!
We drove pass Glencoe….
…before arriving at Fort William where we based ourselves here for 2 nights in Rustic B&B. The host was a very sweet lady who lived in the same house upstairs. The B&B was very clean, has a very cool greenhouse and cute planters everywhere. The Fort William Town Centre is just 5 minutes drive away and there’s some shops about 5 minutes walk away. Would definitely recommend to anyone.
MUST DO: GLEN ETIVE DRIVE
I did a lot of research before the trip and found a website which talked about the Glen Etive Road which seriously intrigued me.
The next morning, we back-tracked onto main road A82 and came to a small junction to turn into Glen Etive. We were almost immediately greeted with the beauty of undisturbed nature.
The single lane road caters for cars driving in both directions so drivers have to keep a lookout for each other. We were lucky as there wasn’t much traffic the whole time we were there.
Along the way, we parked our car at a corner and ventured beyond the road.
At some point, we crossed a bridge and wandered into the wilderness where we found 2 men fishing along the river! We chatted with them for a while. They were very friendly and mentioned that we should have stayed in the area longer, like for a week or even a month to truely enjoy the nature. Well, maybe next time!
The Glen Etive road stretches for about 22km to the head of Loch Etive where it ends near a pier. That’s it. It is literally a road that leads to nowhere. We parked the car and took a walk. We saw people camping out here – it was so cool!
The Glen Etive drive was a very different experience and absolutely beautiful! For people coming to this region, I highly recommend taking this little off-the-beaten path.
Will I come back again? Definitely!
Have you visited Glen Etive? Would you like to take a drive on the Glen Etive Road? Check out where else we visited in the Highlands of Scotland here.
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