My Scottish Adventure (Part 1)

I have been on a holiday to Scotland during the past week. On Sunday 20th, we spent a day travelling to Carlisle from Norwich for the night. But on August 21st, my Scottish adventure truly began as we crossed the border and continued our journey to our base camp for the week at Glengarry Lodge up in the Highlands. This is my 3rd visit to Scotland and I am touring it with my parents, this time in the hope of seeing golden and white-tailed eagles, which I have never seen before.







Haggis and chips! Yum!

Along the way, we stopped for lunch at Pitlochry, where I had haggis and chips from the local chip shop. It was rather tasty, though I did not fancy the deep-fried Mars bar that was on the menu for dessert.

Pitlochry



After lunch, we then visited the dam on the river. Two goosanders were resting on the rocks and hunting in the fast flowing water below, but it was the fish ladder beside the dam that attracted the most attention. A fish ladder is a series of chambers of water that allow the fish a safe passage up the dam. There was even a viewing chamber for the public to look into and we were able to see a brown trout and a few smaller fish during our visit.

Goosander

Brown Trout



Minnow?

Mountain views from the A9

On the road again and we made several stops along the A9, not only to take in the stunning mountain landscape, but also to try and spot my first golden eagle. At one stop, we spotted a 'tourist eagle', that's a buzzard to you and me. Buzzards are often mistaken for eagles by tourists up here and the locals, sick of correcting them I expect, ended up using that nickname. At another layby, I was certain I saw the real deal soaring above the summit of one mountain in the distance. Unfortunately, it was a brief glimpse of it before it vanished behind the mountain, but it certainly looked too big to be a buzzard. This had to be my first golden eagle, if only I had a better a view of it.


Buzzard



View from our chalet

We eventually found our chalet at Glengarry Lodge, after a long drive finding it. I went to explore the campsite, which was beside a loch. There were flocks of swallows, house and sand martins swooping over the water and were starting to come in to roost on a pine tree and on the telegraph wires. The local coal tits here were rather tame, perching metres from me on a nearby bush.

House Martin

Swallow

Coal Tit