On mom and Steve’s last day in Edinburgh, we decided to take The Harry Coo tour. This tour company is small and relatively young. And they have a business philosophy that goes against the grain. Rather than charge passengers an upfront fee, they take you on the tour for FREE and then ask that you tip the driver based on how good you think the tour was and what it was worth to you. Unfortunately I can’t compare it to any of the other Highland tours that run out of Edinburgh, but I can say that it was fab. Our tour guide Donald is one of the owners of the company and really knows his stuff. I would definitely have to say that we learned more about Scottish history in that 1 day that we had in our 9 months here.
The tour leaves from the Royal Mile in a big orange bus painted like a harry coo. We started the day with a brand new (to them) bus. Unfortunately she wasn’t feeling her best and we had to make a swap after our first stop of the day – which was the Forth Bridge in South Queensferry. The Forth Bridge is a rail bridge spanning the Firth of Forth just north of Edinburgh and was built is 1890. It is also a dominant landmark in Scotland.
After picking up our new coo bus, we headed to Stirling to the Wallace Monument. We opted not to climb the 300 stairs to the top because 1) it was foggy that day so you wouldn’t have been able to see much and 2) you have to pay £9 each to climb them. I know of lots of stairs that I can climb for free.
Then we were off to Lake of Menteith with a quick stop for a view of Stirling Castle which we had visited earlier in the week. Lake of Menteith is the only “lake” is Scotland – the others are all lochs. Apparently the English map maker couldn’t understand the Scots when telling them the proper name of the loch and wrote down “lake” instead. Oops.
After lunch in a small highland town, we drove up to the Trossachs National Park for a view of the mountains and then over to Loch Katrine – one of the most peaceful and beautiful settings in Scotland. Because Loch Katrine is the water supply for the city of Glasgow, the surrounding area has been protected and is very much unchanged.
From here we were off to find the harry coos. Unfortunately the farmer had apparently decided to move the coos to a different field. Fortunately Donald knew more than one spot for finding them. And we got to meet the oldest and largest harry coo in Scotland – Hamish. He’s actually a bit of a celebrity and fills in at ribbon cutting ceremonies in the nearby towns when no one else is available.
With the coos found and fed, we started off for our last stop of the day – Doune Castle. Castle entry is not included in the tour price (because it’s FREE) but the castle is managed by Historic Scotland so we were able to use our passes to take the little bit of time we had to go inside. I didn’t have any major expectations for the castle but I was thoroughly impressed by it. We opted not to pay for the audio guide and were later told that was a bad decision. Doune Castle is where Monty Python was filmed and the audio guide is narrated by one of the actors. We enjoyed the castle without it but I’ll definitely make sure to not make the same mistake next time.
And then off to home. It was a full day and we had a lot of fun. I won’t do any of Donald’s stories justice so let just say that you need to take the tour and experience them yourselves.
Hope you enjoyed reading about our tour as much as we enjoyed being on it.
Love you & miss you,
Aubs, Luke & Luther
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