Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh, Scotland

In Edinburgh, we were a bit lost what to do. We had visited the Royal Mile the day before and didn't particularly fancy going back there. We also had no desire to visit castles and museums of which there are plenty.

Then we discovered Arthur's Seat, an extinct volcano. But we didn't know that. We only knew there was a hiking trail just 20 minutes walk from our B&B and there was a small hill to climb. After getting direction from the boss of the B&B, we walked and came to this place with this signboard

Alright, we were right on target. No losing the way this time round.

And this was our target or so we thought.

But actually this is just the first of the range we got to climb to get to the top which is this one.

Yep, the pointy one right at the back at the far left corner

The climb up the 250 metres summit was fairly easy and straight forward. We could follow this road 

Or just walk up the side of the hill

In cool weather, the climb up was much easier than climbing our 163 metres Bukit Timah Hill. But even at a miserly 250 metres, the view it offered of the surrounding city of Edinburgh was stunning. 

The view of Edinburgh at mid point

And the views from the summit

Yes we almost there at the summit

 I want to fly up instead of climb up

And we there

Coming down, we transverse another few hills with tracks and trails leading left right centre

This has got to be a trail runners dream training ground. And indeed there were a few runners criss crossing the hills.  How I wish I was dressed for running!

And then there this ruins of an old abbey which overlooks one of the smallest loch in Scotland and a real life Palace!

St Margaret Loch

Holyrood Palace

But all good things must come to an end and so finally we reluctantly made our way down to find lunch. Now who want to join me come here chiong sua?

Glen Nevis - Steall Fall, Scotland

Continued from Glen Nevis - Lower Falls,

In the end we decided to continue on. Why? Because we could see other people driving in so we figured since there are people still going in, it should be fine. And so we walked on the road. We managed to overtake the other couple who was resting by the road side. Thank goodness we are fit as a fiddle:)

The sidekick walking up the single track road.

And finally we came to this sign!

Yes we finally found it. After trekking for almost the whole day, we reached the trail head to the Steall waterfall. It was now almost 5 pm. How far to the fall and how much time do we have? And more ominously, there was this sign at the start of the trail head. 

How difficult was the hike? I didn't seem to recall any bad write up about the journey there though and since we had went through so much to reach here, I wasn't going to be deter by 1 small puny little sign. So off we went.

The initial part was fairly easy and a no brainer. Narrow but flat trail notwithstanding that we were walking next to a gorge the like of which we city folks have never seen before.

Talking about the gorge. We have never seen a real life gorge before except in the movies and this was like something from the movie. Can't really tell from the following 3 photos but this was as close as I dare to get to take the shots without fear of dropping in. It look deep and rocky with water rushing through it. A fall would likely be death - either from hitting the rocks or being swept away into the depth of the gorge.

And if that was not bad enough, we were literally walking right next to it on a small rocky ridge.

But truth be told, it wasn't that bad and quite easily negotiated. And after some walking we finally came out to the open!

And after turning the corner, there it was! The Steall waterfall right at the back of the photo

 A closer look at the Steall fall. Not as spectacular as expected. Supposed can go nearer but to reach it, we have to cross the river. We didn't want to get our feet wet so we were contended to admire it from afar. But there is another way to reach it without getting the feet wet.

And that is by using this rather aptly name Steall bridge. Only problem with this bridge is, there is only 3 wire ropes on it. 2 on top for the hand to hold and 1 below to walk on!

Like what this lady is doing. And we, we chickened out!

But finally after almost 8 hours, we seen the Steall Waterfall and concluded our trip to the Highlands on a high.

Glen Nevis, Lower Falls, Scotland

Continue from Glen Nevis - Cow Hill Summit

After lunch at a lovely place, we finally we found our way to a waterfall but before passing through a beautiful scape of farmland and the base of the highest peak in the United Kingdom, the Ben Nevis.

Lunch in this cosy little place

 The Ben Nevis is somewhere to the right of this mountain range and this path will lead right to it. Too bad we were not prepared for climbing otherwise would love to scale this peak which at 1344 metres is the highest mountain in UK and which can apparently be done with in half a day!

Back to the waterfall. We came to this waterfall. There were a few cars parked there so we thought this is it.

But unfortunately after walking for almost 1 hour, we did not see the Steall fall, the one that we had came all the way for. We did see some waterfall further away but they didn't look like anything in the photos we seen.

We were in the wrong place again! Despite the nice scenery along the way, I was kinda getting depressed and real disappointed.
 

Was this going to be a fruitless trip? We met another couple and they too were looking for the Steall fall. They figured we were in the right direction but at the lower reach and had some more distance to cover. It seems we had stopped at the wrong waterfall and there was another 3 miles to go to reach the Steall fall. It was getting late and I wasn't enthusiastic about reaching it on time before darkness set in.

Finally we came to a bridge with water cascading down from the river. This has to be the fed from the Steall fall! But how were we to get there. 

After crossing the bridge, we were out of the trail and back on the road. The couple decided to walk up the road. We toyed with whether to turn back via the road and drive up or follow them. It was now around 4.45 and we had wasted 1 hour. We had absolutely no idea how far away it was. Were we too late to make it to the Steall fall? Would it be dark by the time we get there?

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Glen Nevis, Cow Hill Summit, Scotland

Our next stop in the Highlands of Scotland was supposed to be the famous Loch Ness but after being advised by many locals that it was more hype than worth anything and on the advice of the owners at Campus House where we were staying in up in the Highlands, we went to Glen Nevis to look for the beautiful Steall waterfall that has been featured prominently in many travel web sites. 

Of course, we being the perpetual blur king, we ended up erm "slightly" way off from where we had intended to go. This was the start of the Glen Nevis range but not our intended target. In fact we were way off. Of course we didn't realise that initially but after trekking the whole morning and not finding any waterfall, we finally admitted that we were in the right place but wrong location. Nevertheless, we had a wonderful time trekking up one of the minor hills of Glen Nevis.

We started following this river, thinking that this will eventually leads to the fall. But after some walking and coming to a dead end and ending back on the main road, we asked for directions and were told that the waterfall was about 7 miles at the end of the road. So we decided to back track and drive in instead.

2 miles later, we came to a car park and since there were many cars there and a large sign, we decided we were there and off we went.

 And of course, we were still way off. But still, we had a ball trekking to the highest summit there, the Cow Hill Summit.

It was up up up all the way. But every turn of the hilly route gave a spectacular view of the towns and valley below or the hills above.

And that's the Sidekick getting ready to do a "jump" at the peak of Cow Hill Summit!

It seems the Scots government is preparing to reintegrate cattles into these hills. There is this huge ass sign -

We didn't come across any Scottish cows or the Scottish yaks as they are commonly called but we did see some mountain sheep though

We descended but not wanting to cover the same route, we took a side path only to realise that it was leading back up to the summit and so after 1 mile, we turned back again. But we did have another nice view of the valley below.

We walked through this timber forest

And came out to the open with another peak in front of us instead

And we had this glorious view of the valley below which clearly showed that we were going away from it instead of towards it.

So after a whole morning of trekking we were still nowhere in sight of the Steall fall.

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