Photos of Edinburgh and the West Highland Way

This is part of the skyline of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh.

Here's Joe standing in one of the narrow closes in Edinburgh. The modern city is built on top of the medieval city, and there is a section of the original city underground that you can explore. We toured Mary King's Close underground, which at one time was believed to be cursed because of the high percentage of deaths from the plague that occurred there.

This is Edinburgh Castle, perched high on a hill overlooking the rest of the city. St. Margaret's Chapel in the Castle is the oldest surviving building in the city, built in 1124.

We had a picnic in the drizzle in the Princes Street gardens, a large public garden in the Old Town section of Edinburgh, with walkways and benches.

Here's Joe getting ready to climb over the stile into a farmer's field near the start of the West Highland Way. We started walking in shirt sleeves and ended up walking in raingear, winter hats, and gloves, but we were back in shirt sleeves again when we reached Fort William, 42 miles later.

The wildlife we saw was mostly sheep and cows - but we did see Red Deer and a Golden Eagle as well on the trail.

Here are those pesky cows blocking the road. The one right in the middle was a Scottish Highland cow with her calf.

We not only walked through farmers' fields but also past (and through) streams as well as over mountain passes and moors.

Here's the trail cutting through Rannoch Moor, one of the most desolate in all of Scotland. The weather on the moor was OK the first day, but the second day we walked through hard drenching rain and gale force winds. A lot of the trail was like a shallow running stream, and the actual stream beds were overflowing, making getting across rather challenging!

With rain and showers often come rainbows. This is one of the most vibrant ones I have ever seen.

We walked after the peak of the heather, but it must be gorgeous when the heather is fully in bloom - entire hillsides cloaked in purple.

Here is the ruins of a farmer's cottage on the way to Kinlochleven.

Walking through this pine plantation as we drew near to Fort William, our final destination, was almost magical. The embankments were covered with clover. I suspect there were some four leaf ones tucked in there, but we didn't stop to search!