The Valley of Lauterbrunnen

In the last ten years I have traveled quite a bit around Europe especially in the last two years while working for a holiday company. There is not one place that I regret visiting and no place that I would say is not worth at least one visit to experience it, but there are a couple that I love to visit time and time again. They just never get old.

One of these places is the majestic valley of Lauterbrunnen, in Switzerland. This valley inspired people like Goethe, Lord Byron and Tolkien so it's no wonder that it captures the hearts and imaginations of all who visit it. I recently went back to the valley with its 72 waterfalls and snow capped mountains for a holiday and had the chance to get a couple photos. Hope you enjoy!

Great things are done when men and mountains meet. - William Blake 

Climbing Arthur's Seat

So many moons ago when I was a young and naive traveler....hahahaha who am I kidding I would probably make some of the same travelling mistakes again and again. One such travelling mistake happened the first time I ever visited Edinburgh with my sister and friend Kristin (haha yes I am naming and shaming). Well we were visiting Edinburgh and decided we would of course climb the famous Arthur's Seat.

Now we knew you could walk to it from the city centre, we could see a mountain so we put two and two together and thought of course that we had made four. We started climbing and climbing...and after walking for quite some time we were starting to doubt ourselves so we asked a jogger when they came by if in fact we needed to carry on walking. His answer was something along the lines of: "sorry girls this is not Arthur's Seat. That is it over there" cue the pointing to the mountain next to the one we had just climbed. Oh the EPIC fail of two and two making ten. We never did get to climb Arthur's Seat on that visit as time was not on our side.

BUT years later and I finally climbed the right mountain! YES :) My fellow Scotland road tripper Katie and I decided to start our Scotland Footsteps road trip with climbing Arthur's Seat. It was also the start of our road trip shoes apt;y named CON - TIKI in the spirit of making life count, enjoy!

View from halfway up Arthur's Seat

Celebrations as we reached the top. 

Scottish Hiking

Got no plans for your weekend and feel like getting some fresh air - well if you are in Scotland you could try your hand at a bit of munro bagging. So most people who read my blog are probably going 'say what? Munro bagging?' right about now.

Yes, there is such a thing and it has over the years become quite the popular pastime in Scotland and its neighbouring countries. Ok so to get us all on the same page a Munro is a mountain in Scotland with a height over 3, 000 ft (914.4m) and a Munro top is a summit over 3,000 ft which is not regarded as a seperate mountain. They are named after Sir Hugh Munro who drew up the first list of such hills in 1981. There are 283 Munros and 227 subsidiary tops in Scotland, which basically means that is is the perfect place for hikers, climbers or just people who like to walk for hours.

So Saturday morning rolled around and my sister's friend from London arrived in Scotland to visit for the weekend and as she is training to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in roughly two months we decided that it would be a great idea to try a Munro ourselves.

We layered up (never trust Scottish weather) even though the sun was out, filled our water bottles and piled into the car setting off for Loch Muick. As this was to be our starting point to climb Lochnagar.

Lochnagar is on the royal estate of Balmoral and is the name of the carter created by a massive mine explosion during the First World War. Lochnagar is also the setting for Prince Charles's children story 'The Old Man of Lochnagar' published in 1980.

It took us six hours to walk to the Munro top at Lochnagar, and the weather did not treat us kindly. It rained on us three times before we reached the top and I was soaked to the bone by the time we did (investing in a good waterproof jacket is now top of my list). As we reached the top a fog had begun to descend over the Munro, it felt a bit like you were in a cloud, and it halted our progress as we could no longer make out the path.

Here are some photos from our journey - although I have never been happier to see the car and my left leg was starting to get extremely stiff (as I must have upset a muscle that hadn't been used in years) I would happily try my hand at a Munro again!

The crater from above.

The Cliffs of Lochnagar.

Building our own 'cairn' (pronounced ken) when we reached the top. Cairn usually refers to a man-made pile of rocks and comes from the Scottish Caelic. 

If you look closely just above the hill on the right hand side you will notice a forest (dark patch) behind that is where our car is parked and shows you how far we walked. I believe it was roughly 13km, but the view and sense of accomplishment was well worth it.