I spent 48 hours driving around the Scottish Highlands in a rented BMW, on the wrong side of the road, in the rain, with a slowly deflating tire and about fifty video clips that I accidentally deleted. It was one of the best trips I’ve ever taken.
Here’s how it went.
Driving On The Wrong Side Of The Road
I have driven on the left side of the road before, but it had been five years, and there is something wonderfully casual about a rental counter handing you keys and going yeah, just go start driving in Europe. So the whole first hour was me saying left side, left side, left side out loud over and over again, because otherwise I’m not doing it right.
The good news is that I was in a BMW, and BMW drivers are notorious for being bad drivers who don’t use their blinkers, so I was honestly fitting right in. At one point I put my blinker on and I’m pretty sure the other drivers were shocked. They had never seen a BMW with its blinker on. Revolutionary.
Then there are the roundabouts, which they have everywhere, and some of them have stoplights on them, which I’m fairly certain defeats the entire point of a roundabout. We don’t really get roundabouts in Texas. Every once in a while a small town will put one in just to be cute and kitschy, but there’s no real reason for it. And then the signs. Kilometers on some, miles per hour on others, and then a sign measured in yards, which I assumed was a mistake until I gave up and accepted that I do not speak any of the units in this country.
Somewhere in there I went the wrong way entirely because I was scared and I was just following the car in front of me, and the GPS had to sit there and quietly reroute me like it was disappointed. It’s fine. We figured it out.
Glencoe And The Three Sisters
We drove up into the Highlands because the less occupied parts of the country are the prettier parts, and heading up toward Glencoe it got incredibly beautiful incredibly fast. Stone walls older than my entire country. Bridges everywhere, and I love a good bridge. Grass that’s almost more of a moss texture than grass. And then the Three Sisters viewpoint just outside of Glencoe, which is one of those places that makes you pull the car over whether you planned to or not.
And it wasn’t raining. Which meant I finally got to fly.
I Took The UK Drone Test
Before this trip I sat down and took the UK drone certification exam, which cost me eleven dollars, and I got a nearly perfect score. The one question that got me was something like there are some people rambling out in the woods, are you allowed to fly over them? And I genuinely did not know what that meant, so I had to Google it mid-test. Apparently rambling means hiking. I was trying to be safe, trying to be responsible, trying to be a law abiding drone pilot in a foreign country, and I got beaten by vocabulary.
Anyways, the parking lot at the viewpoint was mostly empty, nobody to fly over, and the sun came out, which we absolutely did not expect. I got the shot.
If you want to see the drone and the rest of the kit I actually travel with, my full filmmaking gear list is right here. Everything you’re seeing in this video is graded with my own presets as well.
Scotland Does Not Want You Flying Your Drone
The rest of the trip was a running battle between me and every sign in Scotland. At Eilean Donan Castle there was a sign telling you that you cannot operate your drone between the hours of 9am and 5pm, which sounds restrictive until you think about it for two seconds and realize they’re basically telling you you may only film here at golden hour. I’m not upset about that at all. That’s actually good advice. I bet they’re getting really good drone footage out of that location.
Right next to it there was a sign asking people not to use the area as a toilet, in nine different languages. So now I have to ask. Do you think anybody has ever pooped and flown their drone at the same time? Let me know.
Loch Ness
My dad would have literally murdered me if I drove through Scotland and didn’t go see Loch Ness, so we went. And honestly, we didn’t even really stop, because there was no good turnout and the shore is lined with trees, so it just isn’t a picturesque place to pull over. The light was flat, it was raining, and there wasn’t a single lizard to be seen. It was very pretty and very large and I’m glad I saw it, but it is not the postcard you’re picturing.
Then we were on to another loch, because in Scotland there is always another loch.
I Lost 50 Clips From The Isle Of Skye
Here’s the bad news, and it hurts to type. I was doing dual memory card recording, and then at some point the camera switched over to a single card, and whenever I went to copy everything off I thought the files were on the card I was copying from. They weren’t. I lost about fifty clips from the Isle of Skye.
So in the video you jump straight from looking at a castle to driving for hours in the rain. Thankfully we didn’t get to see much on Skye anyway because of how hard it was raining, but the moment we finally made it out to the viewpoint and the sun came out and it looked absolutely incredible? That reaction is gone. Deleted. I’m more sad about it than you are, I promise.
What did survive is me walking out to a lookout point covered in mud and sheep poop, in wind strong enough to shove you sideways, and taking a full tumble onto my butt right next to a very unimpressed sheep. Jacket muddy, pride muddier. That’s part of the adventure though. If you’re going to have an adventure you’ve got to be ready to get a little dirty, and I definitely did that.
The Seafood Pizza
We needed dinner, there was a pizza place, and normally I’m not a weird pizza guy. I’ll go safe. Meat lovers, something like that. But when in Scotland, so I ordered the seafood pizza. Mussels, shrimp, salmon, anchovies, seaweed, and capers. I asked Rachel if she thought I’d like it and she said I think you’ll love it, which in hindsight was not the vote of confidence I took it for.
Then I opened the box and there was no cheese on it. None. Just seafood.
The first bite is very intense and very punchy, it hits you right in the face, and then once it sits there a little bit and your brain starts to accept oh, this is what we’re eating now, it actually gets pretty good. Would I order it again? I don’t know. Did I eat the whole thing? Yes. I just wish somebody had put some cheese on it. I’ve got fish on there already, who cares, add cheese.
The Tire
Coming back from Skye the car threw up a low tire pressure warning. I got out, looked at it, no gaping hole, no cracked rim, nothing. Pulled forward a couple of feet, looked again, still nothing. My theory was that I’d hit one of the roughly nine thousand potholes on those roads hard enough to burp some air out of it.
We drove fifteen minutes with the tire pressure monitor open, and it held at 1.8 bar, so I figured it was either a very slow leak or nothing at all. Found a free air machine that somebody else had already paid for and hadn’t used up, topped it off, felt like a genius.
The next morning it was completely flat.
Our Airbnb host walked out, saw the situation, handed me a pump and said just take it, I’ve got other ones, don’t worry about it. Kind sir, thank you. So I aired it up in the driveway with 184 miles to go to the Glasgow airport, the car flashing tire pressure low, stop immediately, contact roadside assistance at me the entire way, which is great advice that I did not have the option of taking. It says it has run flat tires. We really tested that.
What followed was a tour of every air pump in the western Highlands. One gas station machine ate the pound coin I had found on the ground the day before and gave me nothing back, because it wanted a pound fifty and I did not have a pound fifty. But eventually we found one that took a card, and we got it back up to 2.4 bar, which is exactly what the car wanted.
We made it to the airport. The car did not explode and launch us into a loch, which would have been a much more dramatic video but a much worse afternoon.
Don’t Force The Shot
One morning I walked out of the chalet to a genuinely gorgeous view, a fountain, the loch, all of it, and I stood there thinking okay, where’s the timelapse, where’s the drone shot. And the honest answer was that there wasn’t one. The light was flat, there were dark clouds coming in, and nothing out there was making me go oh my gosh.
So here’s a rule I try to live by. Don’t try to force creativity, and don’t try to force a moment to happen. If you don’t see something pretty there, then just don’t film it, and that’s okay. It’s a very pretty place. If I see something later, I’ll film it. Otherwise I’m not going to stress about it.
Later that day I drove past the best composition of the whole trip. Beautiful valley, sun out, no rain, perfect light, and there was not a single turnout anywhere on that road where I could stop and launch the drone. Every factor lined up except one. So sometimes you miss, and you just enjoy it in your brain, and you think about that nice shot you would have had, and you keep on driving.
McDonald’s In Scotland Is Worse, Actually
People love to say that American fast food is better in other countries. I’m going to push back on that, because I ate McDonald’s in Scotland and I’d argue the experience was worse. The Coke wasn’t as fizzy and didn’t have enough ice. The french fries actually tasted like potato, and potato does not taste good without enough salt on it. My Filet-O-Fish had good tartar sauce but the bread was too mushy, and I still don’t know why the bread was mushy.
The real tell is that I didn’t feel my heart stopping. Whenever I eat it in America I genuinely feel my health faltering in real time, and here I just thought, huh, that wasn’t that crazy of a meal. So the food is less processed and less salty and less punch you in the face, and with McDonald’s specifically, that’s a bad thing. You want it to punch you in the face.
Flying Over Castle Stalker
Driving along the coast we came up on this gorgeous little castle sitting out on the water, and there was a road leading toward it and a no parking sign roughly every ten feet. No parking, no stopping, no turning. No fun.
So here was my legal argument. I would not be parking. I would be standing outside the car flying my drone while Rachel sat inside the car with her foot on the brake and the car in drive. Is that parked? I would argue it is not parked. On principle.
I got up, avoided the sheep, avoided being batoned by a local, and got the shot I wanted. The castle was sitting in a bit of shadow and there was nothing I could do about that, but the light on the water and the mountains behind it was incredible.
Then I had to bring it back in and land it without hitting the power lines, which is always the most stressful ten seconds of any flight.
Why I Was There In The First Place
About six months before this trip I got a random message from the guys behind That Wedding Videographer Podcast saying hey, we’re putting together a summit in Scotland, do you want to come? And I said yeah, okay, cool. And then six months later there I am driving around the Highlands with a leaking tire so I can go speak at a conference in a couple of days. Pretty cool, pretty fun.
We got to Glasgow with a day to roam around, and I spent a solid chunk of that day seriously debating whether to buy a kilt for my presentation. The idea was tearaway pants that reveal a kilt underneath, which would be exciting and deeply inappropriate. The problem is that I’d be wearing a kilt in Scotland, where everyone has seen a kilt, so there’s no shock factor. It would have to be something blasphemous, like a kilt made of American flags, which nobody there is going to sell me, so I’d have to make it myself. I also considered hiring a bagpiper to walk in during my talk, but again, they hear bagpipes all the time. It’s not novel. What I actually needed was an Elvis impersonator.
I did none of these things.
The summit itself was at Saint Luke’s and the Winged Ox, which is a converted church with a bar in it, and it was a genuinely incredible venue. I had a tattie scone with lorne sausage, which is a rectangular sausage with a potato layer that looks like a tortilla and is really chewy and quite good, slathered in ketchup and brown sauce. Very edible. Lumix had a booth set up actively trying to convert people on the spot, which was dangerous territory for a Sony guy. And then I got up and talked about how wedding filmmakers can actually make YouTube work for them.
If that last part is your world too, I run a free workshop on booking your next wedding in 30 days that covers a lot of the same ground.
My One Piece Of Advice For Scotland
The struggle with filming in Scotland is that every single factor has to line up at the same time. You need a beautiful location, and you need the rain to stop, and you need the sun to be out, and you need the light to be good, and you need somewhere to actually pull the car over. Miss any one of those and the shot is gone, and the weather changes so fast that whichever one you’re missing might fix itself in fifteen minutes or might not fix itself for two days.
So if you’re going, spend multiple days in the Highlands. Not one. Multiple. Give those factors the time they need to line up, because they will, and whenever they do it is absolutely worth it.
I loved every second of this trip and I really hope I get to come back to Scotland soon.