On Friday May 8th, we left Fort William and headed further north. We drove on the A82 along Loch Ness for about half of the trip and then turned east and drove near the coast, ending in Banff. It was only 140 miles but somehow took us 9 hours! This was a combination of windy roads and a few stops along the way. Worth every minute, but still hard to arrive exhausted and hungry.

Our first stop along the way was the Highland Club Scotland in Fort Augustus because we had heard that it was (maybe, possibly) one of the places JK Rowling used as inspiration for Hogwarts. When we arrived, it felt quite private, so I just jumped out and took a couple of photos. Then we drove into town for a gas station breakfast next to the locks.

From there we drove to Urquhart Castle, ruins of a 1000 year old castle nestled on Loch Ness. When we arrived, we saw that only people with tickets were able to enter the car park. I was a bit disappointed as we drove past, so quickly looked on my phone to see if we could still get tickets. It was 12:15pm at the time, and they had spots open for the 1:00-1:30pm entrance time, so we decided to do that. And I’m so glad we did! It is so beautiful there. We started in the visitor center, where they showed us a short film about the history and then opened the curtains to a beautiful view. So fun! Unfortunately we did not spot Nessie.

We made one more stop along the way to grab some food and attempt to figure out some banking stuff for our upcoming move. The place we stopped wasn’t anything special but we did park next to this beautiful church. While there aren’t quite as many churches here as in Italy, it feels like a close second. 🙂

And from there, we drove a bit further and reached our home for five nights, Banff. We stayed in a little cottage directly on the North Sea with views all day, including some gorgeous sunsets (when it wasn’t raining).

The most exciting part of the drive might have been that Olivia navigated us there solely using a paper map that Steffen found in a gas station. She was so proud, as were we!