Having just arrived back from Greek island hopping in the North Cyclades I was left with three weeks of my summer holiday to do with whatever I pleased; I had been bitten by the travel bug and so I booked myself a place on the three-day, two-night Isle of Skye Tour with Macbackpackers, a tour agency based in Edinburgh which runs a range of trips out of the Scottish capital. I headed to Edinburgh on my own, staying in a hostel in Edinburgh for the first night to be able to be in Edinburgh early the following morning for the start of the tour which departed from outside the hostel. I'd signed up to a little, but popular, jaunt around the Scottish Highlands and Islands, heading north-westward to the Isle of Skye and back again in a giant loop. I experienced the Scottish Highlands and Islands with seventeen others, many hailing from all over the world: Ecuador, China, Netherlands and America... The trip is as popular as ever and, over a decade later, Macbackpackers is still running the trip.
We set off in a little white tour van driven by Tim, our friendly and patriotic Scottish guide. His passion for Scotland came through in everything he said and did. Our first day was spent hurtling from the Scottish capital Edinburgh, through the Grampian Mountains, Inverness, down along the shores of Loch Ness, over the famous bridge and onto the Isle of Skye where we spent the first night in a local hostel. The second included touring Portree (the capital of the island) and the Totternish Peninsula. We spent a final night on the island before heading out the next day through scenes used for the filming of Highlander; a chance sighting of the steam train used in the Harry Potter films; and through the landscapes of Glen Garry, Glen Shiel and Glen Coe.
My Macbackpackers jaunt was before the days of digital cameras and thus inevitably an old film-based camera was the order of the day. Unfortunately I'd loaded a duff film in my old-style 35mm camera and so I'm missing some of what I would assume were the best photographs taken on the second and third days. I was pretty devastated: landscapes, group photos and life in the hostels where we stayed were all gone. Thus, the photographs below represent the very best of what I have from this mini adventure across Scotland's more remote locations.
All of us on the ferry across from the Isle of Skye to the Scottish mainland.
Tim, our tour guide on the trip, takes the opportunity to leave me a little gift on my film camera.
Overlooking Loch Shiel and the Glenfinnan Monument.
Glenfinnan Viaduct, Glen Shiel in the Western Highlands.
