Scottish Highlands Road Trip Scotch Tasting Loch Ness Urquhart Castle

We are on a nine-day road trip through Scotland. In this video we are exploring the Scottish Highlands, stopping by distilleries, loch nests, small towns, and castles. Hello happy travelers! Welcome back to Scotland! It is a right crappy day. Sitting here in the dreary weather deciding to do a very Scottish thing which is do some malt whiskey tasting. This morning we drove up into the Highland area. This is actually called the malt whiskey trail which you'll find the famous brands like Macallan and Glenn Fittich and Glenn Livet and I found one that was called Cardew which I picked because it was founded by a woman which is awesome but as we drove up we realized it's actually owned by Johnny Walker. We're not going to take a whole distillery tour or do any of that stuff just going to go in and taste a couple of scotches. So all of the official tastings were booked for the day but they do offer some free samples right in the gift shop so we were able to taste a 12 year and a 15 year and they were really really tasty. I'm definitely much warmer after that. I know it feels a little tingly. You know I really enjoy alcohol that are to the places like we went on a rum tasting. Oh Highland Coos! Yes look at this guy. All right we'll go with that. Yes we will. So we went to a rum tasting in Barbados. I just think alcohol is really ingrained in some cultures and you can learn a lot about the history and the culture of a place from the way they make their alcohol. That was incredibly informal you can do a whole in-depth tasting and a tour and everything but we just got a couple little tasters. These are the first Highland cows I've seen since we went on that tour. Walking back to our car we found this line of amazing vintage cars which I think are part of a club of French people that we saw in the distillery. One of the best parts about traveling in a camper van is you have a kitchen with you at all times so we just decided to heat up some leftovers from dinner last night. Well it's like good Scottish Chinese food. So just while we were out driving to our next destination we found this really cool bridge and this entrance to yes it's an estate or part of an estate but it looks like a mini castle so of course we had to stop. We're going to take some photos and we're working with this van rental company so we're going to take some photos and videos for them. It's going to be very castle-y and very Scottish which are both awesome things. I think the best stops on road trips are the unexpected ones when you just drive past them and you're like wow that's amazing we have to stop and that's just what happened it was like a tiny little mini castle and a cool bridge that's pretty freaking fairy tale right there. We made it to Loch Ness. Where's Nessie? Yeah where's the monster? I would imagine you've heard of the Loch Ness monster but if you haven't there is a old folk tale that there is kind of like a sea serpent that lives in this lake they call it the Loch Ness monster or Nessie. So there's actually a really cool castle ruin that is right on the banks of Loch Ness however when we arrived it had already closed for the day and we weren't able to get inside so we decided to camp nearby and we'll go back in the morning. Dinner tonight is a pasta bake which we bought already made at the grocery store. Very good. Kelly approves. So far finding campsites has really not been a problem we actually weren't even planning on staying at this campsite but we ended up driving right past it and just decided to pull in. If you're here during peak season which is during the summer you probably want to make reservations ahead of time. We're here in September so there's a little bit of availability but honestly they're still pretty full. So even though tonight we've booked with a caravan park we were only able to get a spot that does not have an electricity hookup. There are two batteries there's the car battery and then the leisure battery and they both charge while we're driving and everything should work off of the leisure battery except there's one random plug that doesn't work so we can't like charge our computers or anything but everything should work everything else so I think one night without electricity will be fine. Personally I'm quite impressed at how well this caravan does off-grid. Really thought there would be a lot less that you would be able to use when you weren't hooked up to shore power because that's been our case with most camper vans and RVs we've used in the U.S. but here it's been really good. My favorite feature of this entire RV though is this bed that drops down from the ceiling. We've had camper vans before where we had to set up the bed every night and it was a huge pain in the butt and you never ended up really taking it down you just kind of left it throughout the whole day but this is great because you can have the whole bed set up all the time and you just press a button and it comes down when you're ready and then you press a button and it goes back up and you have a seating area and if I ever do a van build you better believe it's going to have these in it. Oh good morning. How is it? Wonderful. Good night. Since we are basically in a mobile hotel room we decided to come to the Urquhart castle early before they even open and grab a parking spot because I heard that it gets really busy here because it is very popular being on Loch Ness and all and now we can make breakfast and chill out and not have to worry about how crowded it gets later. As soon as we eat breakfast then we'll go down and check out the castle a little bit and then continue our road trip. What's on the menu chef? Egg sandwiches with tomato, turkey, a little bit of cheddar cheese, a couple eggs, on warburton sweet thick white toasty bread. Sweet thick and white. Not gonna make any jokes. Not gonna make any jokes. Not gonna make any jokes. This parking lot has almost completely filled up since we arrived. It's about 10 o'clock right now. Get here early if you want to find a parking spot and it's Monday morning so it's not like it's a weekend or anything. We're going to pay to go into this castle which we have yet to do on our trip but this is iconic on Loch Ness so we kind of have to do it. The only thing we didn't do which we probably should have done was actually get out to the castle early. There's a lot of people here now but we were enjoying our coffee and I was putting makeup on. So it's 14 pounds 50 pence to get in for each adult and you can pay by card. You can also take tours to get here if you want so it can be part of like a package or you can take a cruise out on Loch Ness and see it from the water. So there's lots of ways to see this castle. Right when you enter the castle grounds you're going to come to a big gift shop where they have a small theater and you can learn a little bit about the history of the castle and as you walk down the hill you get your first view of the castle and you come across the trebuchet which is like a catapult but way cooler in my opinion. I'm really happy we visited that castle. It's very iconic being right on the banks of Loch Ness. Very busy even though it's a Monday morning in the shoulder season it was still really busy. Lots of tour buses and there are a lot of stairs so I don't know if I would recommend this for anyone who has trouble with mobility but you still can get down close to the castle. There are lifts and ramps just going through the castle might be a little bit on the difficult side but we're gonna head south towards the town of Fort Augustus. So we used the Park4Night app to find some parking in Fort Augustus which is a town at the very southern end of Loch Ness that looks pretty cute and we're gonna get some lunch here. We're at a little pub that's right next to the lochs here and we decided to get some food and we got some fish and chips finally. I'm really glad we're splitting this because this is the largest piece of fish I've ever seen in my life. So in all honesty I'm not a big fan of fish and chips but that was probably the best fish and chips I've ever had. It was really good it wasn't too greasy the fish was really nice. Yeah I can recommend it. The Loch Inn in Fort Augustus. Thank you. That's why we travel together. She finishes my hamburgers. That's right. Guys we finally found it. The Loch Ness Monster. We found it. Nailed it. After Fort Augustus we headed out to the Isle of Skye and spent a couple days exploring some of the best sights around that island. We made that into its own separate video so if you want to check that out we will link it in the description. But now we are back in the highlands continuing our drive south and we have arrived in the town of Invergary. So we're stopping in this town because there is a castle ruin that Kevin wants to see but we quickly discovered that the Glengarry Castle Hotel has a high tea which we have not partaken in since we've been in Scotland and that is a travesty. So we're dressing up all pretty and we're gonna go take some Instagram pictures and drink some tea proper like with our little pinkies out here and it's gonna be so much fun. So it's an a la carte menu and you can get either tea or coffee and a variety of little sweets. So we got scones, shortbread and sponge cake off this cute little tray with cute little cups in this cute little castle. That was really enjoyable. Just little finger foods and some coffee. Yeah it's definitely something you have to do when you're in Scotland is their high tea even though we had a coffee. Just like that it's a downpour. On the northern end of the highlands is the malt whiskey trail which are there which where a time which where there are made up tonight um shut up pretty straightforward we actually we actually weren't even planning on staying at this campsite but it was and we've arrived in the town of what is the name of this town I don't even remember in Bigary. Do the scone. Do the scone, do the scone.