I had a great sleep that night for some reason (I usually have rough sleeps when traveling), and when I hurried outside the mountains were still there, two red deer were nosing around the back of the Inn, and the morning air was invigorating. It was a little overcast that day, but that made the colors stand out even more. We gathered back in the dining room for their breakfast buffet, and SarahE and I both loved it. The coffee was very good, and they had the whole English breakfast (with a little South Asian sensibility) laid out, sunny-side up or boiled eggs, two kinds of sausages, bacon, tomatoes, pudding, scones, croissants, smoothies/lassis, butter, milk, fresh fruit, etc. As you might expect, I had to force myself to leave.
Packed up and soon back on the A87, which ran down the West side of the mountains to the town of Invershiel, at the head of a string of lochs, leading out to the bridge to Skye. And that’s where we were headed, to the Isle of Skye and to the Farmhouse at Dunvegan Castle. We skirted around the head of Loch Duich, and at the other end, where it meets with Loch Long and Loch Alsh, we pulled into the car park for Eilean Donan Castle.
OMG, where did all these people come from? We were lucky to find a place in the packed car park, though we’d just come down from out of the empty hills. This was our first introduction to a fact of Scottish tourism … the place is swarming with tourists from all over, babbling in quite a diverse set of languages (like American). Even in May with the kids still in school and the temperature still down in the lower teens (Celsius), we ran into a lot of other people in the tourist spots. In August it must be an absolute shoulder to shoulder horror show, if you can even get into the popular places. But we found a good number of deserted places too and liked those best.
We needed a stop, but we were not totally psyched about touring the Castle. Luckily, I discovered they had a “grounds only” admission level, and that’s what we went for. The scene is almost too precious, with a spooky old castle at the junction of three different lochs, with the flowers out and the mountains rising in the background. The tide was out but slowly coming in, and we did some clambering around rocks, shells, and seaweed. Around on the South side of the Castle they had a large bed of wildflowers, including a proliferation of the Scottish bluebells we saw everywhere, and some hidden patches of yellow flowers. There were lots of other people crawling around too, including one fellow who brought a pipe and started playing Scottish tunes while standing on a rock on the shore. Not sure if he was a tourist or a fairy.
It was still too early for lunch, and we still had a long road to get to Dunvegan, so we pressed on after a good tour of the grounds. It’s a fun place but I’m sure the interior of the Castle would be a let-down. We proceeded through the town of Dornie and then along Loch Alsh to the Kyle where the string of lochs empties out into the sounds separating the Isle of Skye from the mainland. The town has a train station at the ferry docks, and a weird object on display at the main intersection, which we figured was a bathysphere. It’s a fun series of bridges over to Skye itself, and we could see lots of maritime activity down below, as well as an amazing number of islands in the distance.
We were just enthralled by the scenery. I was comfortable in the back seat behind the driver with my phone showing me the highlights all around me, my tea in a flask next to me, and amazing stuff to look at 360 degrees around me. The seascape was blue and gorgeous, the hills were impossibly steep and at the same time inviting, the villages and houses were delightfully scaled, and the sheep were everywhere.
And the sheep!!!!! They were fucking all over the place, perhaps not *on* the A roads or in town but definitely on the B roads, the verges, the hills, the beaches, the fields … just everywhere you looked. No need to worry about cutting grass in Scotland, these millions of sheep cropped it as closely as you could get. It was Spring and there were a great number of lambs too, who were all impossibly cute and wagged their tails when nursing. Most of the ones on Skye were white, like the houses, but we saw a few black sheep and in places different species shared fields. A funny thing was that some of the sheep and lambs were painted with swatches of bright primary colors, or numbers on their sides, so they could be identified and herded more quickly. And some rocked punk haircuts because they’d apparently broken away while being sheared.
Anyway, we were traveling through a magical land, and then we found ourselves in Portree, which was a little disappointing. We’d heard it was a pretty seaside town with gaily painted houses, and we thought it would be a great place to stop for lunch, and for a supermarket interlude before we hit the more deserted Western part of the Isle. But Portree was packed with tourists and wasn’t quite as pretty as we’d hoped.
Parked in a car park in the center of town and they had a nice tourist information center there, where SarahE got thistle socks. We were hoping to see some local music on the trip, and the good news was that Portree was having a music festival that weekend. But the bad news was that Portree was having a music festival that weekend, and we hadn’t come that far to mingle with crowds and see late-night bagpipes, or whatever. We got sandwiches in a shop downtown and found a place to sit on the edge of the harbor while we ate them. The tide was out though, and it was a little ugly with some trash (there was actually very little trash in Scotland, great marks on that count), and the boats were not picturesque to say the least. Also, the gaily painted houses could have used a bit of a touch-up.
Anyway, far from me to be critical, but we didn’t hang around town that long, and found a fine supermarket (a Co-op) on the road out of town. We loaded up with the usual stuff (including beer, cider, and wine of course) and then continued North on the A87, forking off to the Northwest on the A850 in Borve.
OK, we’d left the unexpectedly crowded Trotternish Peninsula behind, crossed the Snizort River, and were now on the Waternish Peninsula, back driving through the amazingly lovely countryside, surrounded by steep hills, gorse, sudden views to beautiful islands, and lots of sheep. Our necks were getting sore from whipping our heads around and around to try to see everything. I saw on my phone that we were about to pass by the Fairy Bridge, and I caught a glimpse of it to my right. No one believed me though.
We weren’t supposed to show up at our rented cottage until 5:00 and we were suddenly ahead of schedule, but there was lots of stuff we could stop and see. SarahE had been hoping to see standing stones, and as we approached Dunvegan we saw that we’d be going right by the ruins of St. Mary’s Church, and up on the hill behind it, overlooking Dunvegan, was the Duirinish Stone!
So we stopped there and had a great time, poking around the ruined church and graveyard in the suddenly sunny but windy late afternoon, and then climbing the hill up to the standing stone, balanced impossibly on the peak of the hill. BUT … the stone was actually erected in 2000 to mark the millennium and had a time capsule buried under it. Whatever, it was a fucking standing stone, and the setting was just beautiful. We could see hints of the town and Dunvegan Loch below but couldn’t see the Castle. The trail continued on for a multiple-mile loop that eventually led back to the car park, but we decided that might be more than we were willing to do at the time and we had food in the car that needed to get to a refrigerator, so we retraced our steps down the hill and out through the roadside stile.
Drove into the small town after that and turned North up the Claigan road, past the gates to the Castle, and then a bit past that to the turnoff for the Farmhouse. The house itself was about perfect, and the setting was even better than I’d hoped, we all just fell in love with the place immediately!
Dunvegan is trying to re-wild parts of the family’s vast holdings on the Waternish Peninsula (re-wilding is underway in many areas of Scotland), and their “Farmhouse” cottage is in the middle of a large, fenced off tract. We had no neighbors except for a barn for the re-wilders right up the road. We were up on the hillside far enough to get a great view of the Loch, and we were surrounded by forest, moors, and hills. We had an incredible view of the mountains across the Loch, “Macleod’s Table North” and “Macleod’s Table South,” and Uiginish Lighthouse.
Geez, I’m not doing a good enough job of describing it. I will remember the Farmhouse for the rest of my life (I hope), it made an immediate impression on all of us and every time we’d return to it, it looked as beautiful as the first time. We saw many “holiday cottages” on Skye, but I think we lucked into the best one. All those other tourists can just suck on it.
Jim had been given a code to the key box when he reserved, and it opened for us on cue even though we were early. The house has a central front door and hall extending straight back to the back door. On the right side at the front of the house is a bathroom and a laundry/utility room, with the living room at the back right. Across the hall from that is a dining room, with the kitchen to your left when you come in the front door. Ten carpeted stairs lead to a landing, where they branch to the left and right, each side having four more stairs up to the bedrooms. On the front (Northwest) side there’s a double bedroom (where SarahP and Jim slept) and a bathroom. To the back there’s a king bedroom over the living room, and a twin bedroom over the dining room.
This was more room than we really needed, but in other ways it was just right. Sarah and I were in the king room, and I used the twin room for my exercises. I also stole the blankets from those beds to use instead of the monolithic king-sized duvet. There were a couple of flaws: the front and back doors were hard to open and close and there was no bottle opener or laundry basket. But that was it! It had wi-fi and they left gifts for us (probably hoping we’d buy more in the Castle’s gift shop): local gin and tonic for four, raspberry jam, ice cubes in the freezer and a fresh lemon for the G&Ts, shortbread, and coffee. There’s a picnic table out back too, but we didn’t use it.
After we unpacked, we all had the gin and tonics of course. And then Jim made a pork dinner which we ate at the crooked dining room table. We were all stunned by the setting and eager to explore more. They had some great documentation that we relied on a lot, including a book with several local walks that hadn’t been advertised elsewhere.
After dinner I took a walk way up the empty road/path past the barn in the gloaming. We’d been a little worried if the famous Scottish midges would be a problem, but they really never were, even though we met a few. I was hoping to find a spot up the path where we could get a clear view past the ridge of hills behind us to the Northern horizon, because forecasters were saying the aurora borealis would be very active for the next few nights. Unfortunately, we never really saw it, partly because it stayed a little light so late, almost past midnight. Sarah saw some glowing late at night, but nothing spectacular. Oh well.
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