Loch Lomond and the end of the Highlands — Lisa's (& Steve's) Travels

I recently found that Loch Lomond is considered part of the boundary between the Highlands and the lowlands of central Scotland. We were continually amazed at how big the Highlands area was. Looking at this map (from Wikipedia), the vast majority of our time in Scotland was in the Highlands -

Before reaching Loch Lomond, we visited several castles, the first of which was Castle Stalker -

This was taken from the “official” viewpoint, but I directed Steve to get to a dead-end road that I could walk down a bit and get a better picture -

At the next castle, Dunstaffnage, we were able to visit and wander around inside -

I always admired those castles that were built right into the bedrock.

This one dates from the 13th century.

By now we were “castled” out, but hadn’t yet reached our limit on waterfalls. :)

The Falls of Falloch were an easy hike from the car, and had few people. It was a nice relaxing time.

I wanted to share some interesting observations from both Ireland and Scotland. In Ireland, we would hear “for yourself”, as in “Is everything ok here, for yourself?”, while in Scotland we heard “youse”. In both countries, time was described as “half ten” meaning 10:30. Two interesting phrases we heard in Irish pubs were “beer mats” (coasters) and a great descriptor of a rainy day - “a high stool day”.