We carefully followed GPS’s guidance and moved toward Loch Ness. Since this was the first time for us to drive on the left-side of road, I was quite nerveous.
Whenever I made turns, I always reminded myself - "turning left checks right side first, turning right checks left side first then checks right." I had forgotten that driving a car needed to be so concentrate.
It was also the first time for Erica to sit next to me on the left seat. She was as nervous as me. When we made turns or reached intersections, she was rapt attention to check both sides of vehicles. We were afraid of missing any car or pedestrain passing by. When we crossed the route, Erica would help me to count the exit and make sure we can take right exit.
Inverness city is not large, we quickly went through the city and arrived country areas. GPS led us to take A82 road which was differerent from the road Goople map chosen when I stayed in Taiwan. Road conditions and scenery are much better than I originally expected. After just a few minutes, we pulled over and took pictures as we did not know whether there were more beautiful scenery coming up or not.
Occasionally, we would see a "Camera" sign along the way. Initially, we were still discussing about the friendlly scottich people. They spent time and set up sign to tell visitors where to take photos. Therefore, we tried to pulled over at the area with “Camera” sign. However, we couldn’t find anything which drew our attention. Is it because East and West people have different viewpoint on a beautiful sceneary?
At beginning stage of driving, we maintained speed at 20-30 miles per hour. One of reasons was to help ourselves getting used to new driving habit. However, the main reason was that we want to drive and enjoy the scenery simultaneously. After driving for a few more miles, we found a long line of the cars behind us from the rearview mirror. Even though we tried to accelerate to 45 miles per hour which is normal speed limit on the countryside of taiwan. we still hindered the traffic. Since this was the first driving experiences on the left side of road and we were not familiar with ways here. Accelerate to a higher speed would bring us a lots of psychological pressure. Thus, our solution was to find a parking area quickly and pulled over to lower our own psychological pressure. Later, we discovered that speed limit here is 60 miles.
Soon, we came to Loch Ness. Drive along Loch Ness, on the left side was a large lake areas. When we looked farther, there were a mountain chain as a barrier. The other side of road was the green trees, occasionally interspersed with some small cliffs. The view is a little similar to Su-Hua road on the east coast of Taiwan. The differences are one side of Su-Hua road is cliffs and the other side is vast expanse of blue ocean.
As we drove along Loch Ness, we found a palce to take pictures, enjoy the scenery of the lake, and have a simple picnic. Just when we had finished our snacks, we found a castle from the distance. We guessed it might be the Urquhart Castle. After double checked GPS, we soon realized that the Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle were on the same road. Since tt was still early, we decided to proceed to the Urquhart castle.
First Edition 2011-09-11
Next notice: UK day 3-4 The Visitor Center near the Urquhart Castle
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