D Day

So on the 8th July 2022, I woke up very excited about the day ahead not thinking about the mega long drive back to Inverness I ahead of me, destination Leicester England!

I arrived at Inverness airport in good time and strolled through security which always takes less than 10 minutes due to the airport being pretty small, took a seat and people watched until the flight was  called.

I managed to get on the flight which was half full of a hen party going off to Manchester for the weekend so they were all pretty excited! however I had my own reasons for being excited and that was to pick up the new mini van for my tour business which I decided to start which took less than 2 weeks from deciding I wanted to go at it alone to handing in my notice at my now previous job as a driver guide to going to Leicester via Manchester to pick up the new van, talk about a whirlwind few weeks.

I arrived in Manchester in what seemed like record time, approximately 50 minutes to be precise! the pilot had a hard time slowing that bad boy down when he touched the tarmac! I nearly face planted the seat in front! 

I got off the plane and was met by a very hot sunny day and a very good friend of mine who I had been to school with and had not seen in about 24 years, he kindly drove all the way from Leicester to Manchester airport to meet me, so we had a 2 hour catch up on the way to Leicester, which was nice, it was like I had only seen him a few months ago.

We arrived at the garage and there she was the new Sgùrr Tours minivan looking all shiny. I had a look around the van, signed the papers and off I went ducking into the fuel station to fill it up and off I went across land from Leicester heading toward the M6 at Preston. I must say I was not used to being in so much traffic and it took near 3 hours to do only 100 miles!

As I was driving up the M6 a friend from Inverness called me to aske where abouts I was as he knew I was heading home. He asked a favour! could I pick up his friend and two daughters from Edinburgh airport on my way through as their flight had been delayed from Poland and wasn’t getting into Edinburgh until late which meant no way back to Inverness, so I agreed to take a wee diversion to pick them up and as luck would have it they landed just half an hour before I was due to drive through the airport  

I picked them all up and had never met them before, I had heard lots about the guy however never met him and we had a good old blether for 3 hours non stop on the way back to Inverness, after 452 miles and 10 hours driving instead of about 7 and half hours, I dropped them off at home very grateful and headed home pretty tired and arriving home just a few minutes after midnight.

After such a long day driving the new van, I knew that it would be fit for purpose conducting a 12 hour tour to the Isle of Skye and back to Inverness was going to be a breeze! it’s an absolute pleasure to drive, comfortable and very quiet, I could not have chosen a better vehicle to start my tours with.

That’s my story in a nutshell and I am happy to say that the first 4 tours I have done in it so far have been a dream and the passengers have loved it and I am looking forward to many more tours ahead of me.

I hope whoever reads this gets to come on a tour with me and experience the new van one day soon.

Thanks for reading, see you on the road.