Friday, June 16, 2017

Road Trippin' to Glencoe

The Little Magpie Glencoe Scotland Highlands The Little Magpie Glencoe Scotland Highlands The Little Magpie Glencoe Scotland Highlands The Little Magpie Glencoe Scotland Highlands The Little Magpie Glencoe Scotland Highlands The Little Magpie Glencoe Scotland The Little Magpie Alfa Romeo Glencoe Scottish Highlands The Little Magpie Glencoe Scotland The Little Magpie Alfa Romeo Glencoe Scottish Highlands The Little Magpie Alfa Romeo Glencoe Scottish Highlands The Little Magpie Alfa Romeo Glencoe Scottish Highlands The Little Magpie Alfa Romeo Glencoe Scottish Highlands The Little Magpie Alfa Romeo Glencoe Scottish Highlands The Little Magpie Glencoe Scotland
Well hey there. Hows it going? A few weeks back we got to borrow the amazing Alfa Romeo Giulietta Veloce to celebrate their on-going mission to encourage people to nurture their passions. Now, one thing I've been saying I need to do for a long time is explore more of Scotland. I've lived here all my life and have done all the usual suspects; Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen etc but there's so much of it that I'm yet to see. One place in particular I really wanted to visit was the b-e-a-u-tiful Glencoe, so that's where we decided to take it for a spin.

To break up the drive, we drove to Loch Tay and stopped off there in one of the highland lodges, which was even better than I could ever have imagined. The little log cabin had everything you could ever need - hello wood burning stove - and sat right on the edge of Loch Tay. We had a walk down to the lake, a wee cup of tea at the cabin and headed off to the next village along, Killin, for some dinner (if you're gluten free and you go, you have to go to The Courie Inn; they have a whole gluten free menu that includes gluten free fish and chips (!!!) cooked in an entirely separate fryer and, oh mumma, it's one of the best fish and chips I've ever had). The next morning we got up early(ish) and went on a big walk through the hills that surround Loch Tay. We got very, very lost and came across a host of - surprisingly unperturbed - highland cows at one point, and very probably took around double the time you're supposed to take, but it was such an amazing experience with the most beautiful views you could imagine. My only regret is that I didn't take enough snacks, but that's the exact same story as when I go for a five minute walk to be fair.

The Little Magpie Glencoe Scotland The Little Magpie Glencoe Scotland Alfa Romeo Drive The Little Magpie Glencoe Scotland Alfa Romeo Drive The Little Magpie Glencoe Scotland Alfa Romeo Drive The Little Magpie Glencoe Scotland Alfa Romeo Drive The Little Magpie Glencoe Scotland The Little Magpie Glencoe Scotland Alfa Romeo Drive The Little Magpie Glasgow to Glencoe Road Trip The Little Magpie Glasgow to Glencoe Road Trip The Little Magpie Glencoe Scotland Alfa Romeo Drive The Little Magpie Glencoe Scotland Alfa Romeo Drive The Little Magpie Glencoe Scotland Alfa Romeo Drive The Little Magpie Glencoe Scotland Alfa Romeo Drive
The next morning we packed up our stuff, said goodbye to our little lodge and made the rest of the journey up to Glencoe. Holy Moly. The views from that road are incredible, I can see why so many photographers love it up there. We took a long, long time doing it, stopping off at all the viewpoints, taking the obligatory 500 photos, and then finally arrived in Glencoe. We checked into the Riverbed lodges, which turned out to be the stuff that hobbit dreams are made of... Have a Lord of the Rings scene you'd like to recreate but can't afford the ticket to New Zealand? This is where to head. We did a little bit of archery (turns out I'm very, very... very bad), had some dinner and then headed back to the little hot tub in the back of the hobbit lodge which I'm prettttty sure even Frodo didn't have. Although I've never seen Lord of the Rings fully so forgive me if he was known for throwing wild hot tub parties. 

The Little Magpie Glencoe Roadtrip Scotland Alfa Romeo The Little Magpie Glencoe Roadtrip Scotland Alfa Romeo The Little Magpie Glencoe Roadtrip Scotland Alfa Romeo The Little Magpie Glencoe Roadtrip Scotland Alfa Romeo
And that was it, time to head back home. I'm honestly so glad to finally ticked this a part of Scotland off my bucketlist and a big thank you to Alfa Romeo for helping that happen. So, I'm sure you want to hear a bit about the car, yes? From my, very limited, knowledge on cars I can tell you that it was an absolute dream to drive; spacious in the front, built in touchscreen sat-nav (a true god-send, especially in the highlands), bluetooth, MP3, SMS reader and automatic gearbox (so no embarrassing stalling). However, if you want to get more technical than that then you can read about all of the exact specifications here.

Amy

The Little Magpie Glencoe Scotland Alfa Romeo Drive
Adventure in collaboration with Alfa Romeo and their #FindYourPassion campaign