We were on the bus by 7:30 a.m. for our trip. We drove up toward the Isle of Skye along roads that were at times only one lane wide. There were always places along these one-lane roads that we could pull over to allow other vehicles to get through. We had to back up to let a vehicle through only a few times.
We stopped at an overlook in order to take pictures of Loch Lomond. The song with the line "You take the high road" is about a Scottish man who was captured by the English. He was going to be executed by the English to be an example. On his final night he wrote a poem to his fiancee. A belief was held at that time that we would all be reunited after death. The "low road" is the low road of death.
Then we stopped at Glen Coe. At one time, Glen Coe was the site of the Clan MacDonald. The king of England had sent around a document that clan leaders were to sign, pledging their loyalty to the Protestant English king. The Catholic clan leader of the MacDonalds of Glen Coe had signed the pledge close to the deadline. The English king decided to teach the Scottish a lesson by making an example of the MacDonalds (even though other clan leaders had not signed the document at all). The Protestant Campbell clan had long been supporters of the Protestant English king. The king sent the Campbells north to Glen Coe. The Highland code was to take in even your enemy and show them hospitality. Each would treat the other like a friend until they parted and had separated a discreet distance. Several hundred Campbells appeared in Glen Coe, trained military men, and were housed and fed for 10 days. In the middle of the night the Campbells rose up and killed as many MacDonalds as they could, including women and children. Many of those MacDonalds that could get away died during the winter of exposure. The Highland code of hospitality had been destroyed.
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