We slept in quite a bit this morning. Absolutely nothing to do with the whisky I'm sure. We missed breakfast, and if it hadn't been for the fire alarm going off we might have slept through our checkout time too.

Dealing with a fire alarm in another country is interesting. While I was trying to find my pants and slide on my shoes without socks, Susan made the excellent call to grab our passports and car keys in the 20 seconds before we got out of our room. It turns out the housekeeper had pulled the alarm unintentionally, but she applauded our response time.

After we calmed down a bit we checked out, dropped our bags in the car, and got some terrible coffee at a local diner. We ate grudgingly, but with a full day of driving we needed some fuel. We did manage to grab a few more pictures of the town before we left.

We weren't ready to leave Campbeltown without at least walking by the last distillery in town (and the distillery that inspired our 150 mile detour). Because we'd slept so late, Glen Scotia was actually open and we got to try some whisky. Susan got some full sample pours but I had to take a sip of each since I was driving later. We tried a bottle that had been bottled by hand without being filtered, and it was oddly like an Earl Gray. We bought a few bottles you can't buy anywhere except the distillery, making every full sized bottle in our suitcases some variety of Glen Scotia.

Thusly loaded, we started our 200 mile drive to Inverness. This really was a beautiful drive, since we got to watch the scenery change from coastal crags to midland lakes and finally to highland meadows.

I'd finally started to be confident with the roads and our Fiesta, so it didn't sound like a very daunting day. The first 40 miles or so were a breeze. What we didn't know is that Google Maps had been quietly plotting its revenge against us for constantly ignoring its suggestions for faster routes.

Our goal was another scenic pass through Loch Lomond national park as well as a drive through Cairngorms national park, which are the largest green splotches above. What we got was the unauthorized highlands tour of our dreams (and likely our new nightmares as well). We spent easily an hour of this journey on single-lane roads through the back end of nowhere.

Remember on Day 7 how I mentioned the different kinds of roads in the UK (e.g. M, A, B, etc.)? These roads did not have a classification. Google Maps lists them as "road" or in one case simply ↖️ (yes, really, just a left arrow). We dodged RVs, timber haulers, and insane Audi drivers for something like 30 miles. Susan managed to snap this picture:

Note that this is from her side of the car, and I'm well off the paved road into the grass. On my side we missed the RV by about 6 inches. They were going 40 mph down this road - I guess they figured everyone else would move out of the way. This wasn't even the narrowest road we were on today, but all of them were very busy for a Wednesday at midday.

It was worth it in the end though. We got the kind of views you only get in the middle of nowhere. We stopped a few times where there was enough room to pull over without creating a hazard and got out to take some photos. Here's one of my (now famous) panoramas of the highlands:

Inverness is for the birds

We made it to Inverness on schedule. We checked into our B&B close to downtown and went to get some food. We ended up at MacGregors where we enjoyed food, drink, and being menaced by gulls. I had never before in my life seen a bird drink tartar sauce or fly off with a ketchup ramekin, but I can safely check both off the bucket list now.

We hurried back to our B&B before our new avian overlords' curfew was in effect so we would not be subject to the culling.