OK, so it won’t really be loud, but it will get louder in relation to how quiet I’ve been here the past couple months. Rather than blogging recently, I’ve been busy parenting (dealing with a school system and teachers), working, and preparing for my upcoming trip to Scotland. And of course, I’ve been cycling.

But now, it’s here. As I write this, I’m sitting at the airport waiting for the first leg of the journey to Scotland. In 18 hours I should be there. In 4 days, I’ll be cycling in the Trotternish Peninsula. I’ve got a lot planned (which I’ll outline below) and I’ll hopefully be posting daily, so to stay up-to-date keep checking back!

 

Part 1 – Getting There

I’ll be flying to Scotland through Atlanta and Amsterdam and arriving in Inverness. On my first full day I plan to visit Fort George, Culloden Battlefield, and then make my way to Portree on the Isle of Skye.

Part 2 – Skye

Once on Skye, I have a mostly free day to survey the course of the ride and pick up my bike. I plan to ride a bit as well  to warm up some (it will have been a few days without riding) and to get a little more practice on hills. On Thursday, I’ll be taking the 48.5-mile Trotternish Loop on the bike, and hopefully also be making the ascent up to the Quirang. I plan to post a lot of pics from the ride, and if there’s enough reception I may even livestream some of it on Facebook (so be sure to follow Kilted Dad there).

Part 3 – The Clan

Starting Thursday night I’ll spend a couple days at the International Gathering of the Clan MacNicol. We’ll have some meeting and some tours and a ceilidh or two.

Part 4 – Moving On

Next week, I plan to spend a day hiking around the Cuillin Hills on Skye. The I’m off for a day of research in the Clan Donald Center Archives in Armadale. From there I’ll move to Oban which will be a base for a trip to Iona and to Duart Castle on the Isle of Mull. From there I’ll make my way to Perth, stopping at a few places along the way including the Scottish Crannog Center (what’s a crannog? you ask… stay tuned to find out!).

Part 4 – Perth

I’ll use Perth as the base for most of the rest of the trip which is a little more up in the air, but depending on some research needs may include a day-trip to Edinburgh, and most likely a day-trip to Glasgow which will end with a night as a Glasgow Clan Ice Hockey game.

Part 5 – Returning

After that, I’ll make my way back to Inverness for the much longer return flight. I’ll head to Amsterdam where I have an 18 hour layover (hopefully I know a professor there so we’re probably going to meet up), then back to Atlanta and home.

 

Sounds like fun, right?  Like I said, I plan to spend a lot of my down time posting about this trip, so stay tuned for a lot more details over the coming weeks.