Oh ye'll tak' the high road an’ I'll tak' the low road an' I'll be in Scotland afore ye ........

We have a convoy. 

We've enlisted the help of my brilliant family to drive up to the islands in a variety of vehicles so we can get all of the stuff we need and The Dog up to our new home.
Jessica is driving our car with Mary, baby Charlotte and The Dog. They'll need frequent stops for baby needs, doggie needs and possibly the occasional cigarette. John and myself will be driving the two vans - our own trusty Bongo and a hired transit. Only the car and the hired van are coming back to the mainland where the transit will be dropped off in Glasgow for them to travel back down the motorway to Wales and onto Devon where John and Mary live.

The route is pretty mundane and boring up to Glasgow, relentless motorway driving and it surely feels like you're driving constantly uphill once you get into Cumbria and across the border. Once you're through Glasgow and across the Erskine Bridge, though, everything changes.

Our overnight stop on the journey there is in Dumbarton on the southern bonnie banks of Loch Lomond. After that it just feels like you're driving through a tourist brochure. We pass so many of those places with familiar names and sights that are synonymous with Scotland - Loch Lomond, Crianlarich, Rannoch Moor, Glencoe, Fort William, Ben Nevis, Neptune's Staircase, Glenfinnan viaduct and that's before we even get to the ferry at Mallaig!

LOCH LOMOND

Loch Lomond is about 24 miles long and we'll be driving virtually along the whole of length of the bonnie, bonnie banks.

THE A82 OVER RANNOCH MOOR

We'll be driving along here where the last significant ice sheet in the UK sat and melted resulting in a soggy, peaty bog that stretches for miles and miles. The land here is still rising - kind of exhaling after unburdening itself of the weight of the ice.

GLENCOE

The A82 continues down through Glencoe. This view is classed as one of the most beautiful drives in the UK. This is where close to 100 people from the MacDonald clan were either killed in the massacre of 1692 or left to die of injury and exposure after being driven from their homes for not immediately giving their loyalty to the William and Mary and waiting to see if their own king, James II, would be returning to Britain from France to reclaim his throne. 

The Glen is the result of a huge glacial swathe that has smoothed out the cauldron of a monstrous supervolcano that erupted over 420 million years ago. It's probably safe to drive there now.

BEN NEVIS OVERLOOKING FORT WILLIAM

Ben Nevis is also a remnant of a huge supervolcano that has been smoothed over by glaciers during the ice age. It is nearly four and half thousand feet above sea level and the highest mountain in Britain - almost a thousand feet higher than Snowdon.

NEPTUNE'S STAIRCASE

This is one of Thomas Telford's great engineering feats. It's the longest staircase lock in Britain with 8 locks in total lifting the boats up a total of 20 meters from Loch Linnhe to the Caledonian canal which links the west coast of Scotland to the east coast through The Great Glen via Loch Ness.

GLENFINNAN VIADUCT

If you've seen the Harry Potter films you'll have seen The Glenfinnan Viaduct. Twenty one arches made entirely of concrete and standing nearly 100 foot tall in places it is said to be one of Sir Robert McAlpine's greatest engineering achievements. We don't really go over it on our road trip but if we stand on each shoulders we should be able to see it if there are no leaves on the trees.