Western Scotland - stunning landscapes

For two days we drove along the western coast of Scotland and down to the Isle of Skye, mostly over narrow roads with beautiful landscapes in every direction. The mountains felt strangely familiar, which made sense when we stopped at this exhibit telling us how the Appalachians used to be connected to Scotland, eons ago.

 Herb is with some clever geologists who figured out how the older rock got on top of the younger rock.

While the drive was fascinating and beautiful, it wasn't exactly relaxing.  Herb had gained a lot of confidence driving on the left by this time, and was zooming along a bit faster than I was comfortable with, especially as he kept ogling the scenery and pointing out yet another distant mountain while NOT KEEPING HIS EYES ON THE ROAD. Little swerves into the oncoming lane weren't such a big deal until a giant lorry appeared over a hill and swept by us at a high rate of speed.  Stay in your lane, Herb, stay in your lane.

Weirdly, while the mountains felt somewhat familiar, they were also very alien, in a way, because there were so few trees.  Every rock, dip, and stream was visible from the road. Without trees, the mountains took on a more dramatic aspect. And with so much off and on rain, the mountains were frequently misty, looking like some primeval vista, still cooling off after being pushed up out of the molten earth.

I never got the full story of why there are so few trees. Herb says it's the latitude. Some English people on the train said it's because there are too many sheep and deer and they eat all the little trees. Some other people said it's all the logging.  Maybe it's all of the above.

I took gazillions of landscape pictures as we zipped along, but the tinted windshield might have taken a bit of the edge off the glory.  Here's a little slide show of some of the amazing scenery that I made instead of pasting all of these pictures into the blog.  Hope it works!

Wester Ross and Skye PowerPoint slide show