As we travelled towards Loch Ness, the scenery continued to shine. As we emerged on to the edge of, possibly the most famous loch in the world, we were struck by its size. It was considerably longer than we had envisaged, although not incredibly wide.

As we headed west, away from Inverness, we decided to pick a campsite that was close to the loch that would also give us access to walks from where we camped. Again we seemed to stumble on a little gem, this time in Drumnadroit. It was a reasonably simple campsite, but it had everything that we wanted and meant that we could service the camper van ready for the next part of our trip.

View across Loch Ness, Scotland

The following morning we awoke to a damp mist blowing in from the west down the loch. Regardless of the weather we decided to make the most of our location and return to the heart of the village in order to pick up the trail that lead to the hillside behind Drumnadroit. It was a lovely walk and the weather seemed to be passing us by so we managed to stay dry. By the time that we had reached the highest point on our walk, the sun seemed to have burned off the mist leaving us with a great view across the water. The view was only equalled by the stunning plants and trees that lined the pathway, and the giant redwood that signified the end of the trail seemed to be aptly placed.

Sarah in front of a Giant Redwood, Drumnadrochit, Scotland

Having returned to the camper, we decided to take a quick detour to Urqhart Castle, as it seemed to feature a lot in the local guides. The view of the castle and loch behind was lovely, but we decided not to venture in as there were a lot of tourists around and it looked like a couple of coaches were just depositing more people, so we jumped back in the camper and started heading back towards Inverness, and the official start of the NC500, on towards Tain for the next planned stopover.

Urqhart Castle, Loch Ness, Scotland