We left Aberdeen to head up towards the Northern most point of Mainland Scotland. Due to not comparing the navigation maps properly, Sarah and her crew took the Highland Tourist route, through Speyside; the Whisky distillery regions and through the highlands, Mark and Sonja and their crew went along the Deeside tourist route, along the river Dee towards Balmoral Castle and up into the highland via some single lane roads! Both ways seems very spectacular.

We met again at Grantown on Spey for a lunch stop and got caught up in “Thunder in the Glens”, hundreds of Harley Davidsons roaring around the roads. It was fun for the first 30mins then we thought we might never make it to our accommodation as it went on for ages. However we managed to sneak out and head to the Loch Ness for a bit of Monster Myth and then onto our accommodation in the settlement of Forse called Forse of Nature. They had lots of Chickens! We had a fabulous meal with spectacular views at a restaurant called Walingoe Steps.

Elise – The Orkney Islands were a lovely place to stay. I really enjoyed looking around the neolithic sites including Skara Brae ( a well preserved village) and the Tomb of the Eagles ( a burial chamber in the cliffs). My favourite part was seeing the WW2 wrecks in the water and visiting the Italian chapel. The weather was very warm (for Scotland) so we ended up swimming every day, even though it was freezing.

Tessa- The Orkney Islands were a beautiful place to stay and we had stunning weather. The natural scenery was absolutely breath-taking. I really enjoyed all the neolithic and bronze age sites. The Churchill barriers and Italian chapel provided an interesting, more recent story and I would love to stay in Orkney again!

Adam- The Orkney Island were a fun place to stay. We had lovely weather and did lots of swimming- which Mum and Dad we very surprised about as the sea was very cold. When we visited the neolithic Tomb of the Eagles, I thought it was cool as you could pull yourself into the tomb on a trolley with a rope overhead. Skara Brae was also really interesting but I was sad that you couldn’t go inside, even though they did have a recreation.