The world will end; love and music endureth (dedication to the Macarthurs, pipers for the Macdonalds of the islands)

Monday, 1st June

Exploring Skye

We got up early to charge the phone, camera and computer, as our room had no power in the power points. Guests in another room had a dodgy adapter that kept throwing the circuit, and despite the landlady telling them to not use it, they continued. She had me intimidated, so obviously a more foolhardy guest in Room 3. Our landlady is rather nice, certainly a fabulous housekeeper and cook. The house, facilities, garden etc are spotless and breakfast was excellent.

We were collected by the tour bus and driven to The Old Man of Storr and Kilt Rock. Skye has a very rugged landscape, lots of mountains, some are Munros (mountains higher than 3000 feet, Scotland has 282, 27 on Skye). A Mr Munro catalogued(?) all of Scotland’s mountains and some people pursue the challenge of climbing all of them.

We then went to a place that used to mine and process diatomite, a substance that no one had ever herd of or knew about. It is no longer mined or processed, however the ruins of the factory on the beach look interesting, and we passed by a spectacular water fall and sheep precariously perched on the way to the cliff.

Then on to Kilt Rock which is a cliff that is supposed to look like the back of a man’s kilt, and if you scrunch up your eyes and have several shots of the local whisky, you can almost see it. The Old Man of Storr looks like an old man sleeping, mouth open snoring away. See previous sentence.

We had a tea break at Columba 1400, a place that was set up as a multidenominational retreat for leadership development, set up in celebration of St Columba’s 1400^th anniversary of settling in Scotland (on Iona). This connects with the stories we heard of St Columba in Ireland. He stole/ acquired/ copied a manuscript in Ireland, was caught out, absconded and fled Ireland for Scotland, vowing never to set foot in Ireland again. He sailed to an island, but could still see Ireland in the distance and sailed on until he reached Iona. He set up monasteries and brought Christianity to Scotland. However, he did have to go back to Ireland for some reason, a convention, a conference, a get together, so he lined his shoes with Scottish soil, so he would never have to “set foot on Irish soil”. Now there is a lovely centre set up in his honour. Go figure the thinking.

We have now been to the windiest place on earth and the most northern points of Skye. One of these statements is true. But it was REALLY windy. There was a ruined castle (aren’t they all?). The story os quite sad. The nursemaid was dangling the son and heir infant out the window as the MacDonald Clan chief was returning from a sea journey and accidentally dropped the baby on the rocks below. The MacDonalds then abandoned the castle as it was now cursed and moved to a different location, building a new castle, elsewhere in the island. I think there is a lot more to this story, between the nursemaid, the chief and perhaps the baby’s mother. No one is saying a lot. Suss.

Back on the bus and on to the Museum of Skye Life, which is a group of original and recreated stone and thatched 18^th and 19^th century cottages. We didn’t go in but were able to get some pictures from outside the fence.

The bus tour returned to Portree and we had an hour of free time for lunch or shopping or return to your accommodation.  We strolled around the shops. This has been our only free time during the day on this trip. Our evenings are our own, but the days are full on. Not a minute’s break!

After lunch break we headed off to Taliskers Distillery at Carbost, on Skye. The world’s most northern distillery. We were able to sample a few of their many single malt whiskies and found one that we really liked. Port Ruighe (pronounce Portree, which is where we are staying!) Amazing!

Then we headed to Dunvegan Castle, which is the longest continuously inhabited castle on Skye (possibly Scotland) since 1360, i.e., by the 30 successive Chieftains of the MacLeod clan. The basement, ground and 1^st floor were open to the public whilst the family inhabited the 2^nd & 3^rd floors, surrounded by 5 acres of carefully manicured gardens. This was the highlight of the day’s tour. As every room revealed more and more and more about the importance of the clan in Scottish psychology and culture of which the Macleod is the last surviving remnant.

However, although today the first day of summer rained non-stop and we were pierced by arctic blasts of wind we were not hailed upon as per the previous 3 days, we wore less clothes, and were finally toughening up a little. Like our hard arsed Scottish brothers and sisters - they do not say much but they tell you exactly how it is and are very honest & straight-forward.

As we were setting out to walk the ten minute walk to our restaurant booking, our lovely landlady , Robina, offered to drive us. We gratefully accepted, as it was pelting down. We had dinner at the restaurant at the Rosedale Hotel in Portree, recommended by our pal, Rick. Mary had the panko coated brie with grilled asparagus and Dick had the venison chorizo for starters. Dick had 1kg of mussels in white wine, garlic, shallots and cream sauce and Mary had 8 langoustines in parsley, butter and garlic. We shared a orange and lemon panna cotta and Taliskers’ Port Riughe whisky digestive. A couple from our bus tour were also at the restaurant and we ended up having a great chat with them throughout the night.

 Before

and after

The views from our table were rather lovely, overlooking the Portree Harbour.

On the walk back to the B n B, (it had stopped raining) we saw something special and it reminded us of Oscar's quote, "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars"  when we saw this little flower: