The Beautiful Isle of Skye

The Fairy Pools

Dunvegan Castle

We awake Tuesday morning at the Macaskill's to a lovely warm, sunny day without a cloud anywhere in the magnificent blue sky.  Ah, this is so nice - no rain or gray skies here on the Isle of Skye!  Anne has made porridge for breakfast and locally baked bread, toasted.  On the table, her homemade marmalade (my favorite!) as well as strawberry jam made by a friend.  Everything tastes wonderful!  Ariana had found some "Fairy Pools" on the internet about 25 miles away and wants to go there this morning.  I'm in no hurry to drive again, I was hoping to just walk around Dunvegan and take in the sights.  By the way, they use miles and MPH in the UK, thankfully - at least I have something going for me on the road.  The kid is persuasive, so we head south to Glen Brittle.  We encounter a few errant sheep on the road and stop to take photos of some of the bazillions of sweet baby lambs dotting the landscape.  The last 8 miles of the trip take us off the main two-lane road onto a single lane.  It's very nerve wracking wondering what's over the next hill or around the bend.  Ariana snaps a photo of one of the amazing long-haired Highland cattle calmly chewing his cud right along the road for my sister, Joanna, the farmer.  We joke if she was with us, she'd be screaming, "Pull over, pull over!!!" to see the cattle, like she did on a road trip to Virginia years ago.   We make it to the parking lot for the fairy pools unscathed.  There are 8 or 10  cars in the little lot, a group of hikers sets off just ahead of us.  I imagined lovely little turquoise pools alongside an idyllic path.  Not quite.  We hike about a mile on an easy path into a mountain backdrop like something from"The Sound of Music" but have to climb down small cliffs to see the pools.  Ariana asks me to take a photo of her with sheep in the background and I point the iPhone camera backwards - at me!  We laugh so hard we're crying and can hardly stand up.  She is trying to tell me that all she could see was my big fat eye on the screen facing her but we're both laughing so hard we can't even breathe.  My brains are so scrambled from driving on the wrong side of the road - I blame it on that, anyway!!! I used the toilet just before we left, but thanks to my large water intake, have to climb down a small crevass to tinkle in the woods for the first time in a few decades.  The fairy pools are just that - amazing little pools of liquid turquoise that look so perfect it's hard to believe they're real.  I feel privileged to be able to enjoy something so few people get to experience.  On the trek back out, we pass some guys in swim trunks in the water.  It's nice out, but not that nice!  From there we head to Portree, one of the largest towns on Skye, about 25 miles away.  We grab a sandwich at a hotel then walk around town.  It has some very cute little shops where we get a couple of items for me to bring home.  There's a gorgeous harbor that reminds us of Avalon on Catalina Island, but with colorful Mediterranean buildings ringing it.  We have coffee nearby, then two scoops of ice cream to share.  We get blackberry and cranachan - ice cream with oatmeal & raspberries.  The blackberry was the better of the two. We take a shortcut back to Dunvegan and go to the Giant Angus Macaskill Museum next to the Macaskill's home.  Peter gives us the low down on Angus, a relative listed in the Guiness book of World's Records as Scotland's tallest man at 7' 9" and the world's largest true giant  It has some of his clothing and lots of articles about him when he travelled with TomThumb.  We pose for pix with his statue, then head to Dunvegan Castle. We had driven by when we first came into town, but the castle can't be seen from the road.  It's a couple of miles from the house, so we get to see most all of tiny Dunvegan on the stroll.  When we arrive, we buy tickets and find that we can take a seal boat ride for 6 pounds more if we take our tickets to the boathouse below the castle.  We roam the lovely gardens surrounding the castle for a bit and buy tickets for the boat before entering the castle.  Once revealed, we discover that it's well kept and regal, elegantly poised atop the cliff overlooking the water.  The man of the castle, Chief of the MacLeod clan, was quite handsome in his day.  He's shown in one photo greeting the Queen here in 1956 - looks like a movie photo, they were both very good looking at the time.  We run down the hill to catch the last seal boat - we don't really know what to expect.  It's a small boat with a couple and the pilot on board.  He takes us out to some rocky little formations in the harbor.  We see a bunch of rocks, but nothing moving, as we approach. As we get closer, we realize the "rocks" are actually harbor seals!  They're happily sunning themselves and allow us to get pretty close.  We putter around for about half an hour watching and are treated to some pups jumping and frolicking in the water.  It's a lovely, lovely day to be out here - we enjoy the sun on the short trip back into the dock.  As we exit, we visit some of the bloom filled gardens we missed on the way in. 

Meringue, Berries & Mackie's

Anne is home from work when we return and busy in the kitchen.  She makes a casserole with layers of fresh salmon, pasta, veggies and cream sauce topped with cheesy bread crumbs baked in the amazing oven that stays on 24/7 and heats their water. We devour a big plate of the pasta and some broccoli, then a beautiful bowl of ice cream & berries atop a delicate meringue.  I'm thrilled with the meringue - I didn't get one in Paris.  What a treat!  

Neist Point Lighthouse

Sunset on Skye

Anne says she wants to take us to see a lighthouse, so we hop in her car.  She drives us through rural areas narrating as we go.  We stop at Peter's 2nd museum where visitors can experience how folks lived back in the day, to close up shop.  We pass a fresh water lake adjacent to the coast where eels live and come to a parking lot at a dead-end.  She pulls up into the lot and tells us to go to the top of the hill to see the lighthouse.  It's almost sunset, windy and cold by now, so we run up the hill as fast as we can.   My shoe gets sucked off in the muck and I step back into the muck - I scream and we both laugh so hard as I pull my slimy shoe back onto my slimy foot.  Hard to believe, but I have to pee again.  I wonder if there will be a place up top to duck off the path, but as we reach the crest of the hill, there are photographers everywhere, rimming the horizon capturing images of the amazing sight before us.  The lighthouse is perched at the tip of a finger reaching out into the Minch Straight that separates Skye from the Inner Hebrides Islands. The word 'breath-taking' doesn't begin to describe the view here.  I feel like I'm on the edge of the world (even though I live on the edge of the world back in Newport), so AMAZING!  I've never seen anything more beautiful anywhere.  If it hadn't been so brisk, I'd probably still be up there just drinking it all in.  Exhilarated, we run back to the car and jump in out of the cold.  We wind back towards Dunvegan where all three of us photograph a gorgeous, gorgeous sunset over the sea. I wonder aloud if the island was so named because the sky is so beautiful here.  Anne tells us 'skye' means wing.  We pass a herd of about 20 deer and many more sheep.  It's so peaceful and serene here, I tell the girls if I won the lotto, I'd move here and open up a Bed & Breakfast.   

I wanted to finish this blog tonight, but will have to do one more installment about our road trip back to the 'burgh.  This blog is taking longer that the trip did!