Isle of Skye

Last weekend a group of us from school went to the Isle of Skye. (Since I will likely use their names from hereafter without explanation, those who went are Steffi, who set it all up, Stephen, Katie, and also Katie's brother Nate.)

The roads to get there are very twisty and mostly two lane highways. According to GPS calculations we should have made it in 4-5 hours, but it took at least 6. Unfortunately we arrived well after dark. I got out of the car, knowing the cottage was right on the coast, saying I bet the view was going to be fantastic, but at that moment we really couldn't see anything.

Our wee cottage was adorable. More like a cabin in it's decor of open rafters and pine paneling. It slept six people and even had a little loft space which we dubbed the tea loft.

Nate with his tea in the 'tea loft.'

This is the view from our cottage. It was on the southern most peninsula, called Sleat which is known as 'The Garden of Skye' and our cottage was located in the teeny village of Ord. Ord is only accessible via a windy one lane road populated with sheep. It sits on the west coast of the Sleat Peninsula overlooking Loch Eishort. (Don't be fooled by the name Loch. Loch can be an inland lake or what we would call a salt water bay. This one is a bay.)

On Saturday we went to the Fairy Pools in the foothills of the Cuillins Mountains. These often crop up in lists of beautiful must-see nature from around the world. It was worth the trip.

Hi, Stephen!

It's not a bad hike, a couple miles or so. Some places you have to cross the stream using rocks, but it's not deep in those spots, so it's not scary or anything. 

Katie and Steffi fording the stream. :)

The water streams down out of the mountains and tumbles into various pools which are brilliantly clear blue. 

That's not reflected rock you see; that is rock under the shallow water. The deeper blue color is the deeper water.

'Cause we are a bit crazy, we got in them. 'Cause who doesn't want to touch the Fairy Pools?

Lest you think that water is warm, just look at Steffi's face. Polar plunge.

Katie, Steffi, and Nate completely submerged.

I really didn't have the right attire, so I just got in.

Stephen, our only Scot on the trip, ran away from us and our craziness lest he be tainted by such nonsense. :)

Then it was time to warm up with some whiskey tasting in Carbost at the Talisker Distillery. 

Don't they look so serious? Don't buy it for a minute!

I don't like whiskey. Knew that going in, and this didn't change my opinion. But I did learn a couple things. Like the craze for drinking whiskey neat is nonsense because adding water opens up the flavors. And because you should add water, it is usually cold-filtered so that it does not cloud up when water is added.

After that we went to the Gaelic College (yep, that's a thing) to pick up Steffi's friend Nat (not to be confused with Nate) and then went to Dunscaith Castle, which is now in ruins. It was built in the 13th Century. If you want to believe the colorful legend, it was built for the Celtic goddess Scathach, "the Shadowy One" and completed in one night. Dunscaith means Dun of the Shadow.

It was lovely, and did look like the stuff of legends.

To get to the castle we had to walk across a moor. The part near the coast line looked like this, potted with little pools of water and strewn with rocks:

On Sunday, we drove back to Glasgow, but we had a couple stops along the way.

One last look at our view from the cottage on a misty morning.

First we went to Eilean Donan Castle. It was first fortified in the 13th Century and changed many times over. The Macrae family restored it and has held it in private ownership since the early 1900s. 

Some proper Scottish weather we were having.

We also stopped in Glencoe, which I had visited on my trip to the Highlands last time. It was really cool to see it again after some heavy rains. There's always these streams and waterfalls coming down the mountains, but they were much bigger and faster this time.

It was a very long weekend, but a lot of fun. We saw so much that was just so beautiful. In fact we kept commenting on the awesomeness of the scenery, and realizing the inadequacy of language to express our awe, that it became a joke to just say, "It's not bad." or "It's all right."