Every passion starts somewhere. I was not a hiker until I went on a roadtrip with my best friend. This trip, and the sense of freedom we experienced, are probably what led me to chase down all the adventures which I now do.

Summer in Scotland

When it happens it is glorious. There are two things you don’t know about from the photos.

1. The Midgies
2. How much you will hate the midges.

Leaving them to one side however, the roadrip that we did was as follows:

Day 1 and how we planned our trip.

We did not have a plan. We were heading up to past inverness to see a friend, and that was all we knew. We wanted to do walking, wild swimming and driving. We were in an old convertible Mercedes which was a lot of fun however we broke the convertible function on day 1. We did not want to risk getting the top down to never get it up again. A shame, but we had fun none the less!

On the evening of day 1 we were doing research re where to go for day 2. We found the Fairy Pools which looked good for swimming. I had not heard of these before – they are very famous, but I was not into hikes and natural beauty spots therefore was clueless. We decided on Skye. Off we went. We had nowhere to stay the night of day 2. We figured we would work it out as we drove along.

Day 2 – Fairy Pools and Mallaig

The morning drive to Skye was delightful. The scenery on the way to the Pools, and the island in general were stunning. We were blessed with fabulous weather.

Parking is very easy, well organised and plenty of spaces. The walk to the pools themselves is not hard. The path is clear and easy to follow. You will not get lost without a map and there will likely be many other people there when you go.

There are different pools to go into, and we found one that had no one else. We had a swim and splash about for about 20 mins before heading back to the car. The whole adventure took around 2 hours, but could have been much longer if we stopped to picnic or explore other pools.

Stage 2 of our day was to get to Mallaig. We had booked a Shepheard’s hut for the night and were needed to get the last Ferry of the day. We had a bit of a rush back from the pools and just made it in time. Arriving into Mallaig we were starving and a little grumpy – we had not planned our meals well at all. We found an amazing local fish and chips and cheered right up.

We drove out to our accommodation which was on the shores of Loch Morar. We noted it as a swimming spot for the next day. It was here that I stopped to take a photo.. and when I got out of the car I was mobbed by midges. They were in my hair, eyes, mouth.. all over me. It was quite unpleasant to be outside!

Day 3 – Mallaig, Glen Etive and the Cobbler

We woke up and planned our day. I knew of some excellent swimming spots in Glen Etive, and I had wanted to climb The Cobbler since hearing about it from some friends. We looked at the map to see if both things would be possible in one day and decided to try. The summer evenings are very long in Scotland. We had many daylight hours to play with and thought it would be great to pack as much as we could into the last day.

We set off and, after stopping for a quick swim, headed straight for Glen Etive. The road was beautiful. I won’t bombard you with images of roads.. but if you do love a winding road, curving through mountains, forests, along the slide of lochs.. then this is definitely something you should do!

Glen Etive – famous for James Bond and the scene from Skyfall, is found between Glencoe and the Bridge of Orchy. If none of those place names may mean anything to you, google is your friend.

We made our way slowly down the winding, single track, road. We stopped to take some photos with the car, do some skipping about in the fields and generally have a lovely time. We found a perfect place to pull over and gain access to the river. We were not the only ones there, but it was not as crowded as Skye had been. The water was cool and refreshing, the sun was out and the midges were actually not that bad.

We didn’t want to, but had to leave in order to make time for the Cobbler before dark.

I did not know what to expect from the Cobbler. I knew it had a funny shaped rock at the top, and that it was not a Munro. That was all I knew. We parked up and set out. We did have some water and sandwiches, but we were not really dressed for hiking. Fresh from the river, I think we still had swimming stuff, shorts and sundresses.

The Cobbler

This little hill is in fact, quite big. It is a Corbett and, standing at 884m high, would be the 7th Highest mountain in England were it to be south of the border. Well, you live and learn.

There is a circular loop around the Cobbler. We decided to go around the back and down the front. We had no map. We stopped someone to ask for directions. This really was ‘climb a hill 101’ day for us. As we climbed higher, we could look back at the larger summit of Ben Ime shown here. We stopped several times to catch our breath.

Once at the top, we found a place for a picnic but the midges were so bad (even at the top!) that we did not stay to finish our sandwiches and headed back down. The mist had started to come in, and were were worried that we would not be able to find the path as we were going down a different way. Luckily, the clouds came and went and we got back OK. A very underprepared set of hill walkers we were that day! We made it back to the car and completed our trip back to Glasgow – arriving before midnight.

Summary:

If you are looking for a trip where you can swim, hike and drive on beautiful roads each day, every day: this is for you.

Great little loop – we went to inverness specifically to see someone. If planning this again, I would likely do day 1 in the Cairngorms, then cut across south of Loch Ness to head to Skye. Cairngorms has some cracking walks, swims and forests too.