We went on an organized hiking trip to the Scottish Highlands in July. This was our first hiking since John’s 2021 accident, and it was a bit more challenging than the brochure advertised, but we both survived. Interestingly, they have signs in Scotland to warn about folks of our vintage.

We flew into Inverness, regarded as the capital of the Highlands, touring and tasting “whisky” (they are insulted if you call it Scotch) for a couple of days with Roger and Peg before meeting our hiking group at the train station. We even stumbled upon the local festival of the Highland Games in a park along the River Ness.

We hiked from Torridon on a trail up between Liathach and the famous Beinn Eighe, a massive ben (mountain), where we discovered a dramatic landscape of soaring pinnacles, cliffs and corries – valleys formed by glacial erosion. The next day we hiked out & back to a historic Bothy (old stone buildings where hikers stay overnight) and proceeded to Portree on the Isle of Skye. On the Isle of Skye we hiked the dramatic ridgeline at Trotternish through steep hillsides and past craggy peaks before climbing up and along the pinnacles and cliffs of the Quiraing, which we discovered in bar encounters later is a pretty famous hiking place. There we were met with stunning, but misty views of the sea and coastal landscape. After that, things tamed down a bit with hikes to the picturesque village of Plockton, Duncraig Castle and Cawdor Castle (connected in literature to Shakespeare’s Macbeth).

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