Scotland

There are two seasons in Scotland: June and Winter.

• Billy Connolly, Scottish comedian

It's my 30^th birthday in a few weeks. There's a number of things on my “before I'm 30” list that I have managed to tick off, thanks to my dad and a recent trip to Bohnie Scoatlind. Thankfully, we managed to do it in June.

So, I've finally climbed Ben Nevis. It's the highest peak in the UK at 1344 metres (4409 feet) above sea level. 
 

It was a hard slog, but was nothing compared to Teide 2 weeks ago. This was roughly the same amount of ascent but nowhere near the altitude. Nevis also had a much more spacious summit, so this time there was no chance of me plummeting to my death.

I did Scarfell and Snowdon- the highest in England and Wales respectively- when I was very young, then grew away from the whole fell-walking thing in my teenage years. Despite that, Nevis has been hanging over me like a curse- a curse that, two weeks ago, I lifted. It was awesome.

We road-tripped on. Here's the Commando Memorial, in Lochaber, dedicated to the British Commandos who trained in the area during WWII.

I got a stone under the brake pad when I was driving past Loch Ness. Cure for this situation: stick it in reverse, trundle back a few metres, then roll forward. It'll knock the stone out of the mechanism. Do this as soon as you hear a terrible scraping noise. This sound is the stone as it scores your brake disc.

Next stop: The Moray Firth, specifically Chanonry Point. This spike of coastland is the best place in the UK for dolphin-watching. We camped close to the coast so we could get out there early and catch our first glimpses of bottle-nosed dolphins.

For more info on dolphins in this area of Scotland, see here. 

I wanted to capture as much of the trip on camera as possible, so I had the phone on charge in the car as we drove. My dad also brought a digital camera so there's twice as much opportunity to get the pictures and the memories that we want. I found that HTC cameras have a slight delay between pressing the shutter and the image being captured, so if you're using these, when you try to photograph a dolphin as it leaps, the shot you'll end up with is the empty waves after the dolphin has dived. I faced this problem so I switched to video. Please excuse the heads of other people. I hate being a short-arse.

Still: incredible, beautiful creatures. I had no idea, until a few weeks ago, that you could see dolphins anywhere off British or even European coasts.

No trip to Scotland would be complete without checking out at least one of their world-famous distilleries. We dropped into Cragganmore, in Speyside.

Most whiskies are named after the location of the distillery, e.g. Cragganmore is in Cragganmore. Conditions of entering the distillery include that photography is prohibited, which meant that, with no visual reminders, I have only a vague recollection of the place. The whisky-making process is COMPLICATED. I'm not even going to attempt to explain it to you, although what was explained to us on the tour matches this site's descriptions quite well. 

Two girls guided a group of maybe 10 of us around Cragganmore's buildings, showing us the processes and equipment used at the distillery. They were barely past 18, but they sure knew their whisky.

The tour ended with a short whisky-tasting session. I, of course, picked up a Distiller's Edition of the double-matured single malt when we got to the gift shop at the end of the tour.

After this, we shot over to GlenFiddich, home of another fine whisky. (Dad did the driving for the rest of the day, for the record. He's teetotal.)

Here's the iconic GlenFiddich stag

This was a bigger setup- unsurprising being a bigger brand- with an introductory video projected in a small cinema near the entrance. The video, featuring a dramatisation of the distillery being built in 1886, was well-shot and informative. A tour of the building followed this, including- most memorably- the warehouse where the barrels are left to age.

The sights and smells of this place linger in the mind. Inside, you're invited to smell the insides of the empty oak casks used to age the malt. When you breathe in, you can pick up notes of the sherry, for which the barrels were previously used in France before being shipped to Scotland.

A brilliant, captivating building. See it for just a tenner.

In a car park a few hours later, we found this advert.

Can you tell what's wrong with it?

The Scots love their whisky, as we already know. But I didn't realise that even the cafe's have a top row of single malts.

I took this pic because, in the top right, next to the three Macallans, there's a whisky called Mortlach. I was stunned when I saw this. I tried it years ago at a whisky tasting night, detailed here. I was so wrecked that when I tried to write the name down it was illegible the next morning. I made an attempt to decipher it, and guessed at “Mortglag”. I Googled this. Other than here, the misspelled word only appears online in the Roman Economic Journal.

Next stop: Edinburgh. We drove and walked over the Forth Road Bridge, linking Edinburgh to Fife. I think I was too shit-scared of dropping my phone- which would have plummeted a good hundred metres- into the Firth of Forth below, so I've not got many decent pictures of the bridge.

To round off the trip, we went to Granton Harbour to connect with a little family history.

In 1901 one of my ancestors, Captain Charles Culley of the sailboat The Active, died here when his boat sank in a fierce storm. There's very little information about the tragedy online, but- around ten years ago- I was fortunate enough to talk to my grandad about the events that night. I've still got the minidisc recording of the telephone conversation and some written material, so expect to see more on the subject on this site over the next few months. It's quite an eye-opening story.

My dad and I planned our work and worked our plan. Everything we wanted to do, we managed in the space of three days. I also drove for longer than I've ever driven before without a break, which was possibly the biggest challenge. I don't recall the exact amount I drove but it was a good chunk of the 223 mile journey back home.

It was a great weekend. If it's practical for you to get to Scotland, you should do- ideally right now while it's summer, as Mr Connolly implies.