Lochs and castles

Driving west from Edinburgh in the late summer this year we took both the high and the low roads
along the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond ...

where road signs start to appear in Scottish Gaelic

(How much more interesting does Ceann Loch Chille Chiarain sound - hear it pronounced here -  than Campbeltown, once, though no longer, a centre for whisky ... Now Campbeltown Loch is a beautiful place/ But the price of the whisky is grim/ How nice it would be if the whisky was free/ And the loch was filled up to the brim) 

and the cattle are distinctively Highland ...

(I could never get a close-up of these beautiful, shaggy, shy creatures who took off every time I came near. Perhaps if I'd spoken Gaelic to them ...)

Looking onto and over water becomes mesmerising in these parts ...
for young lovers too

the town of Inverary a reflection in the water ...

... its castle, seat of the Campbell clan, now better known for having been the setting for last year's Christmas special of Downton Abbey (in which the Granthams decamped en masse for a spot of hunting to the fictional 'Duneagle Castle' owned by the unfortunately named cousin Shrimpy).

Loch Fyne was a welcome pit-stop for lunch ...

with bucolic views of water and green hillsides

(and this fine vintage Jag in the car park)

But not for long. The road further west was beckoning ...