In December 2017 my girlfriend and I decided to take a short-trip to Scotland. We earned a couple of high eyebrows and weird looks for this plan 🙂

Scotland in winter…

– “you’ll be happy if it’s just raining!”

– “It’ll sure be freezing cold all day!”

– “you won’t get much sun up there!”

– “you’ll stay bored in the hotel.”

Luckily, all of that didn’t turn out to be true 🙂

• It’s been snowing half of the time.

• Temperatures were between -2 and +7 °C

• The sun rose shortly after 9am and went down at approx. 3pm

• We’ve been out all day.

We took a plane from Graz to Aberdeen via Amsterdam and then headed west via rental car. Aviemore is a great place to stay if your goal is to discover the wonders of nature in Cairngorms. Beautiful mountain views and glittering lochs are just a couple of minutes drives in every direction. I knew the chances are generally not that good, but nevertheless I hoped to take a glimpse at northern lights during our trip – unfortunately even with a KP 5 on two days it was not possible due to heavy clouds. We’ve been out discovering Cairngorms as well as a couple of other places north and south most every day – stunning castles and good hikes – not only in summer!

New Year’s Eve in Stonehaven (half an hour south of Aberdeen down the road) is amazing. The “fireballs ceremony” is definitely worth seeing.

Looking back I really enjoyed this trip, if you’ve been thinking about going to Scotland – you don’t have to wait for Summer – this country is definitely worth a visit at any time of the year!