Today we were up at 5am to walk to George IV bridge and meet the coach for our full day tour of the Scottish Highlands. Several people didn't make it on time so the bus driver had to go without them.
We set off in the dark and passed Falkirk, so I managed to see the Kelpies lit up. Unforunately, they were on the other side of the bus, so I didn't manage to get a good photo.
We were very lucky with the weather and stopped several times to get some lovely photos.
We made it to Glenfinnan viaduct about 10.15 and enjoyed some views of the loch and the Glenfinnan Monument (seen in the foreground of the photo above). The Harry Potter steam train was due to cross the viaduct at 10.45. So after a quick look around the gift shop, we set ourselves up in a good spot and got some good shots of the train on the viaduct.
After that it was back on the bus to race the train to Malaig, where we would be boarding it for its trip back to Fort William. The train stops for a few hours in Malaig before it turns around, so we had time to explore the small town and have some lunch before boarding. Malaig is pronounced "ma leg", which resulted in Becky frequently lapsing into a fake limp and a fake Scottish accent with the line "och ma leg!"
The views from Malaig were beautiful. In the photo below, the island of Eigg is the one on the left with the shark fin appearance, the one in the middle is Rum, and just on the right is the edge of the Isle of Skye.
We sat with a nice couple from the Czech Republic on the train and waited for the trolley with the chocolate frogs to come round, which it did. However, our bus driver had already supplied us all with lunch packs that included a chocolate frog as we boarded the bus, so we didn't need to buy anything, not even a butterbeer hot chocolate.
The windows of the carriage were a bit dirty, but I managed to get a decent photo of the viaduct while we were crossing it.
We saw lots of Harry Potter locations, including Dumbledore's Island, the Black Lake and the backdrops for many of the quidditch matches. On the way back to Edinburgh we stopped to admire some highland cattle near Pitlochrie.
We arrived back in Edinburgh after a 14 hour trip and headed straight back to the hotel and fell into bed.
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