After a solid period of working and being productive while travelling across the UK (and our last stay in Edinburgh), we decided to take a few days off and go on a roadtrip. There’s nothing like an outdoorsy adventure to take the mind off of work, to disconnect and to re-connect with the simplicity of nature, am I right?

Besides, we knew that our nomadic travel would have to leave us a bit of extra room for exploring those incredible sights that make Scotland such an epic place. Our roadtrip was shorter than expected, but we still enjoyed every single bit of it.

These last days I’ve been going through the photos that we took during it. Some people say that we shouldn’t be obsessed with documenting everything (as it’s done in our social media driven time) and rather learn to live in the moment. I totally agree with that, but yet somehow I disagree, as I do think that photographing those special moments does contribute to appreciating them even more.

When we lived these things, we enjoyed them, certainly. We were fully present to absorb the beauty of those moments. However, we are also happy, almost relieved to have photos of them, as it means they were lived but not ready to be forgotten. They have been captured and are now preserved.

There is something strong about documenting life. Capturing a moment that is dear to your heart can make it feel like it could last forever. Just by looking at these photos, it feels like I’m living them again!

On the first day after leaving Edinburgh, we drove towards the Cairngorms national park. We had planned to visit a local brewery to do some beer tasting but didn’t get very lucky with that as the tour guide was sick that day! So what we did instead was to just explore the area even more, and to find nice places to walk… We found this lake called Loch an Eilein, which turned out to be a beautiful place. The best part? We were greeted by some really cute ducks. I could watch them all day.

For our first night on the road, we decided to keep it outdoorsy so we set camp in a blissful place called The Lazy Duck, owned by a duck keeper who uses his land for farming and accommodating campers! Pretty cool way for someone to use their property, right?

The first night camping is always a tough one for me and I usually find it quite hard to sleep, but layering like crazy makes it much easier! 

On the following day we drove to the Isle of Skye. It’s a very beautiful, very wild and quite remote place in the Highlands so we knew that we’d get to see some incredibly inspiring sights. However, one of the other reasons why we chose to visit this place is because of its abundant wildlife, particularly otters. …which is pretty cool because we are “otterly” obsessed with them!

If you’ve been following us, you might know this random fact about us. We like this animal so much, that we have even used our design skills to contribute in projects and organisations that involve its conservation, such as The UK Wild Otter Trust, and previously for the Kentucky Wildlife Center (2 years ago) 🙂

The way to Skye was pretty epic and we got to see a castle. The weather was quite foggy, which gave it a spooky feeling.

We made a stop at Kyleakin, grabbed our binoculars and hopped on a boat with the hope to see our first glimpses of the local wildlife around the bay. We didn’t get to spot any otters, but we did get to see plenty of seals. Gosh, those are so funny to look at, we had a hard time “not” cracking inside jokes and laughing, just like two little kids. I’m pretty sure the other passengers thought we were crazy but that’s ok. We don’t get to see things like these every day, do we?

Trying to find a place to sleep that night was really chaotic, as the weather was absolutely horrible. It had been raining continuously for the whole afternoon, so we weren’t convinced that setting up our tent in this wet (possibly muddy) ground would be a good idea. After scouting the area around Broadford in the rain and going from one “fully booked” B&B to the other, we finally managed to find ourselves a couple of comfy spots in a hostel. Thankfully that was a pretty good deal, it kept us warm & dry and we slept like babies. Ah, the marvels of the adventurous life. These are the moments when you realize how lovely it is to actually have a proper roof over your head!

The day after, we explored a little more. We were told about a little path in the coast of Broadford, which was a really nice morning walk. We really enjoyed it, as the rain from the night before had finally stopped …and we even spotted some more seals being funny and chilling on the rocks, which made our day.

With the tide being low in the morning, the seascape changes dramatically. It’s really beautiful seeing all those rocks and seaweed scattered around, almost like seeing the coast decomposed. There’s also something quite nordic about that.

We drove north to set camp around Dunvegan. Funny random thing: the name of our camping site was “Kinloch” which is basically our name (Kinlake) in scottish. I guess that was some sort of sign because we actually really liked it and had a great time there.

Just a little further from Dunvegan, there was a place we wanted to check out, called the Coral Beach. It’s a beautiful beach where the “sand” is basically tiny pieces of corals, and the way there was pretty entertaining, as there were plenty of furry four-legged friends. That’s the beauty of the scottish “Right to Roam“: cattle and walkers easily cross paths, as all the territory is open for anyone to wander through and if there are ever any gates, they are open!

In the afternoon, we drove around the northeast side of the island to see the majestic Quiraing. However, we weren’t sure where exactly it was or what to expect, so we didn’t get our hopes too high… And then… there it was.

Ah, don’t you just love it when you are just casually driving around and then all of a sudden you see something that COMPLETELY blows your mind? That was how we felt.

Just seeing this amazing sight just pumped us full of dopamine. We stopped the car and rushed over the cliffs to get the best view of it. It was quite windy though and there was a cold breeze coming through which made us both freeze and shake to the bone. We took as many photos of it as we could and then ran back towards our car for shelter!! Totally worth it anyway.

After our last night in Skye, we knew we had to get mentally prepared for a long drive. The idea was to cross the whole of UK in just a couple of days in order to get back to Luxembourg on time for a photography project (which we just did this week and will certainly tell you more about!). Our destination for that day would be around North Yorkshire, just about halfway down. However, it was still going to be a 8H++ drive, so we knew we had to find ways to stay alert & energized. One of the best ways to do that is to simply take plenty of breaks and do fun things.

We were quite lucky with that! We noticed we had a leaflet from a Marine Wildlife Sanctuary which we found out was actually on our way, so we spontaneously stopped there and it was certainly an awesome break from driving!

We got to see some more funny seals, as well as an OTTER (finally!). This little guy’s name was Lewis, and apparently he had a “wife” called Isla, a lovely female otter. Unfortunately, she had died a couple of weeks before our visit, and the rescuers had to make sure that Lewis would turn out ok, as he was depressed and was looking all over for her… Just so sad.

Animals can be just as emotional as we are and I don’t understand how there are people in this world who have no compassion for them.

As otters are a very vulnerable species and we love them so much, David and I will keep being involved in their conservation as much as we can through our creative skills. David has been helping organisations with their web-design and self-promotion, and one of my goals is to create otter illustrations during my free time, to help raise money for these active causes.

I think we all need to live with a purpose to give back and to contribute to something good. It might be easier said than done, but once we have found things that matter to us, it becomes easy to work for them and the inspiration flows. This is exactly how we’ve also been involved in other projects, such as The Orla Collective, which we founded!

We are currently back home in Luxembourg and are working on many exciting projects which we will tell you more about soon. You can also follow us on our instagram stories to catch a glimpse behind the scenes 😉

…And because the idea of living nomadically is something that we actually are getting more and more comfortable with, we are planning some new adventures (new places to live & work in) for the fall which we’ll probably talk about soon. That’s right, we won’t stick in one place for long, the travel bug is calling!