Our winter holiday

As it generally gets a bit quieter for us during the winter (welcome, believe me) we try to get away for a week or two before the spring weddings begin in earnest.  Over the last few years our winter retreat has centred around the area of Glen Coe in the Scottish Highlands.  It’s a place quite staggering in it’s natural beauty, but is popular for outdoor pursuits with some of the best walking and climbing to be found anywhere in the country.

This time we once again stopped at the Loch Leven Chalets.  The chalets are very spacious and comfy and the owners Ian and Sharon do a great job of keeping the place running with all mod-cons.  Being up here, self catering suits us, as it means we can take the dogs (Pippa and Bella) and can keep our own time for meals.  The dogs adore being here.

This time we at least tried to make some attempt at visiting some new places, but the old favourites pull us back every time.  We took the Corran Ferry over to the Ardnamurch peninsula to drive over to the most westerly point on the UK mainland.  It’s an absolutely stunning area, but with very bendy roads.  If you don’t have power-assisted steering, forget it!

Something we’d not done for a few years was take the Old Military Road walk around the narrowest part of the glen.  This gives you the best view of the three mountain buttresses known as the Three Sisters, which themselves are mere spurs of the highest peak in the Argyll area – Bidean nam Bien.

Weather was as usual a mixed bag.  We had a couple of days of rain and some snow but as always in this area we got the “4 seasons in a week”.  The glen has it’s own microclimate so whatever the forecat says, it’s best just to ignore it and try to venture out anyway.  But the last day was absolutely stunning.  The clearest I’ve ever seen the glen in the years I’ve been visiting there.

So enough of the wedding frocks, have a look at some mountains instead.  Oh, and some very cute doggies…