Me and a few old school friends decided to spend a long weekend catching up in the beautiful landscapes of Scotland. We jumped on a plane to Glasgow, picked up our hire car and drove north west to the beautiful village of Glencoe.
We arrived at our lovely little cottage and began planning our hike for the next day. The Pap of Glencoe is famous in the area, so we decided to conquer that...or so we thought.
The next morning we got up early, filled ourselves with breakfast and coffee and headed out. We couldn't see the top of the mountain from below as it was covered in cloud, but onwards we went. The mountain isn't huge but the terrain makes it a difficult hike. The loose rocks mean you have to really concentrate to make sure your footing isn't going to slide from under you.
There was a period not too far from the top when the incline increased dramatically and we could start to see snow covered areas. I was pretty close to giving up at that point as my legs were tired and the driving wind made it extra tough. However, we powered on up after a much needed thermos of tea and we made it to the top just as the clouds began to part, giving us some incredible views of the valley below.
After what proved to be a much harder descent than we expected, we headed for some refreshments. When checking the map of where we'd been, we found that we'd actually not made it up the Pap of Glencoe, but instead scaled a taller mountain just to the right of the Pap...whoops.
Our cottage provided some stunning views of the area, which really helped the recovery from the exhausting hike.
We wanted to explore one of the islands off the coast of Scotland so we drove south to get a ferry over to the Isle of Arran. Driving around the west coast of Scotland was so much fun. The scenery is breathtaking, it's pretty amazing to have it so close and so easy to get to. We stopped off at a small village to explore some castle ruins before making it to the ferry port.
We'd discovered that there was a whiskey distillery a short drive from the Arran ferry port, so we held off driving to our hotel to taste some of the elixir. We decided a tasting session would be best and proceeded to try the full range of Arran whiskies. The £75 a bottle 18 year old unsurprisingly tasted incredible, proving to be one of the smoothest whiskies I've ever tasted.
After some whiskey we headed for the hotel while being on the lookout for eagles. We think we saw a pair of eagles, but they were too far away to properly confirm our sighting sadly.
We arrived at the hotel and booked ourselves in for dinner. After dinner we took a stroll into the village to enjoy the sunset before heading back for some evening drinks. it was relaxing evening made even better as Justin took over the piano in the drinking lounge.
The next morning we packed up our stuff and headed for the ferry back to Glasgow. We all took some time to admire the views before heading back to normality. It was impossible not to talk about coming back to Scotland and which islands we wanted to visit next time.
If you've not explored the Scottish countryside I would urge you to try it. We've got some of the world's most incredible landscapes right on our doorstep and I'm ashamed I left it so long to explore them. I've caught the bug now and I'll be going back again soon.
Here's a much more detailed summary of our time.
© 2026 Michael Wilson
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
/resize(700,400,crop)/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)
/resize(700,400,crop)/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)
/resize(700,400,crop)/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)