Isle of Skye day 1 and 2

Isle of Skye day 1 and 2

It can be hard to do a posting every day when the internet is spotty, but it is good today, so here goes.

Skye is a really beautiful place and most of the people who come here hike and hike and hike to various lovely places in the mountains. We have, so far limited ourselves to taking lovely pictures of the views along the way.

We picked up a car in Inverness at Avis at the airport - the excellent news was that they upgraded up to a lovely Mercedes C-Class sedan. Smooth ride but the electronics can be difficult to decipher.

We decided to take a different route than we took last year - heading east into the Highlands to drive down to Skye. It was a most excellent drive. The views were wonderful. We stopped at a little golf course and had a panini lunch. Panini is super popular in Scotland - go figure.
Rogie Falls - just West of Inverness
One of the many Lochs we passed
Clubhouse for the Locharron Golf Club
Just another beautiful view
We are staying at a lovely hotel at the northern tip of the island - maybe a bad choice but there were few hotels with availability when we reserved. But on the drive to the hotel we saw some of the geological wonders that Skye is so famous for.
The pointed rock on the right is the "Old Man of Storr" - people hike up to it
This is our hotel. Lovely grounds.
Some strange variety of Pine tree - must look up
sunrise today
Today we did a couple of things. We headed even further north to the Museum of Island Life. It is a grouping of about 8 croft buildings - stone buildings with thatched roofs. We thought they were reconstructions but it turns out they were real - albeit restored with new roofs. The group that put it together did a great job of curating each of the buildings. Lots of history and displays.
typical crofters cottage.
Flora Macdonalds memorial
Bus stop and mail box in the middle of nowhere
Just up the hill was a cemetery that contained the grave of Flora MacDonald - the woman who helped spirit Bonnie Price Charlie out of Scotland after his tragic defeat at Culloden near Inverness. She is quite a celebrity. Actually we are staying in a room in her old house - it is part of our hotel.

After the museum we went to a coffee shop/art gallery that was featured in the BBC show Grand Designs in 2012. It is a cute turf-roofed angular building - actually two buildings. One is a house and the other is the coffee shop. I wouldn’t call it an art gallery since it had only about 10 prints on the wall for sale. But the coffee was very good and the carrot cake was delicious.

Next we tried to do a tour of the Talisker Whiskey Distillery but I (Carolyn) had screwed up the time we were booked for. We would have had to wait for two hours - which clashed with a boat trip we had scheduled. The boat trip won out.

Lucky as we saw two eagles, about 10 seals, and a pod of small dolphins. An actual nature cruise that delivered.


Eagle-eyed Susan looking for Eagles


We couldn’t handle another restaurant meal so we went to the Co-Op market and bought various ingredients for a salad. About 100 pounds less than our dinner last night at our hotel.

It was beautiful and sunny all day today - fingers crossed for a repeat tomorrow.


CDN and SXM

Comments

  1. RFKMay 25, 2018 at 12:56 PM

    Happy Birthday Susan. What a wonderful way to spend one's birthday- on the isle of Skye with your wonderful soulmate. The incredible photos reveal it to be a day in Paradise. Thank you for sharing a glimpse of your time in Skye.

    ReplyDelete

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