Oban & Stirling Scotland and Northern England

We make a quick stop at our last stop in Scotland, while heading South, before entering Northern England and the Lake District…follow me!

On our way South from the Highlands, we made a quick stop in Oban, Scotland. This is a pretty little seaside town with great, old architecture, beautiful sea views and wonderful food and drink. If you are a Scotch Whiskey connoisseur, then Oban is the place for you. Oban distills their own whiskey and, of course, you can tour the facility and have tastings afterwards. I will have a food photo to post once I get into filling my new food area of this blog. After Oban, we drove to Stirling, Scotland.

We drove to Stirling to get a little bit of a history lesson of events that took place during William Wallace’s tenure in fighting the British during their attempted takeover of Scotland. The weather, as you can see to the right, was nothing but bright gray skies and rain. It wasn’t a kind day for photography and there weren’t very many shots taken in this city.

Near the monument to William Wallace, in Stirling, was a big statue of Robert the Bruce. Robert the Bruce was King of Scotland from 1306 until his death in 1329. The 2 reasons for stopping in Stirling were Stirling Bridge, because William Wallace won a big battle against the English at this location and, to see the William Wallace monument. We drove up to a rather large hill and at the top of it, shrouded in fog and hidden from view, was the tower to said monument. I couldn’t even get a clear shot of the statue of William Wallace that was halfway up the tower wall. For a nominal fee, you could climb to the top of the tower for the grand view of Stirling and the surrounding land…in our case, the view of a giant fog bank with zero visibility. We opted out of the climb to the top. From Stirling, we drove to the Lake District in Northern England.

Here is the rare plug, maybe not so rare, of a place where we stayed in the Lake District. The owners were so wonderfully nice and informative about the places to go see and photograph. The Lake District is full of hiking trails. In the area in which we stayed, there were several to choose from and we told about one, in particular, called the Coffin Trail.

This is the front of Crow House B&B. If I’m not mistaken, our room was above the dining room. There were beautiful, lush green, farm land where sheep, ducks and geese ate and rested. And after a rain, everything looked fresh and very photogenic. I don’t mind clouds, in fact, I prefer a little drama in my shots.

In the above photo, if you were facing Crow House and you turned a quarter turn to the left, the picture to the left is the scene you would see. All the different shades of green after a rain, just beautiful. My wife and I had a discussion and we were both of the same conclusion…if we were to retire tomorrow, we could easily see ourselves living out the rest of our days in the Lake District. Extraordinary beauty for as far as your eye can see.

I believe this is a good place to stop and I will give you some of the Coffin Trail and on to a couple of castles as we head down North Central England with lots more to come. This was a big trip, we were gone about a month, and I tried to get in as much as I could. That was a mistake and I’ll share with you the reason why when we bring this whole trip to an end. But, that’s a ways off. I hope that what I’ve brought you so far has given you an itch to visit this area of our world. If not, stay tuned, I think what you’ll see next time might get you there…until then, be and travel well!