Death Valley

After the lochs yesterday we hit the glens today...

Or at least the most famous and grandest glen in Scotland, which can also be - in bad weather - one of the grimmest. Thankfully we seemed to have left the wet behind us, at least for a few hours, and enjoyed the peace and tranquility of Glencoe in the sun.

Entering the Pass of Glencoe with Buachaille Etive Mor
(the Great Shepherd of Etive) to the left and the Aonach Eagach ridge to the right.

The Three Sisters

Glencoe was written into the history books in 1692 when the resident MacDonalds were murdered by Campbell soldiers in what became known as the Glencoe Massacre.  If you want to read all about it you can here.

After a picnic lunch and visit to the Glencoe Centre (which we actually had to pay for seeing as it was National Trust and not Historic Scotland tsk) we headed back home along the coast via the Scottish SEA LIFE Sanctuary.

Modern, clean and SeaWorld-esque it was not...

The Scottish SEA LIFE Sanctuary became involved in the rehabilitation of seals during 1980 when a young seal pop was abandoned by her mother and was given to the centre by Suffolk Wildlife and Country Park who were unable to protect her.

After much handling by humans they were unable to return this pup to her natural home, so she remained at the Sanctuary to delight and educate visitors with her graceful behaviour  Her name was Blondie.  Two further pups joined her in 1983, a male named Lorne and another female named Gingha.  As these seals had received too much human care before arriving at the centre, they too were unable to be released.

The formation of this community led to The Scottish SEAL LIFE Sanctuary becoming the focus for sick and abandoned seal pups throughout Scotland.  Each year up to 15 pups need rescuing and all of these are reared and released back into the wild, with minimum handling from staff, leaving the adults seals to develop and breed in their own specialised environment.

And with that our holiday was done.  Or at least the first part...

The only proof that we did actually see Wattalot when we were there!
Check out my scores though - I am good at Quirkle when I'm not
playing three children's hands at the same time as my own