We spent the next couple of days on Isle of Skye and it was spectacular. It was crowded, but we used our strategy for big US national parks and it worked out well: Visit some of the most crowded places while other people are starting to head to dinner.
We started the day at the Fairy Glen in Uig. We got there pretty early, but it was already a challenge to find parking, made more interesting by the fact that the road is a single track with pullouts and is super windy. This actually ended up being good practice for the rest of the trip. We walked around The Fairy Glen for an hour or so. It was really pretty and not terribly crowded while we were there. There were a lot of cars on the road in as we were headed out.
A very distinguished looking Scottish Blackface Ram
Looking down from the top of a little butte in The Fairy Glen.
Bootshot of The Fairy Glen. I took the previous picture from the little butte in the upper middle of this photo (the high point).
The Fairy Glen by the road.
We stopped for lunch at a roadside park with a historic site. This cute Cheviot lamb insisted that I take its picture.
Next, we went to the Museum of Island Life, which was well worth the admission fee. This is an example of a traditional croft with a thatched roof.
We meandered around the northern part of the island and then made our way down the eastern side of it, which was definitely busier. After a stop at a yarn store, we decided to hike Old Man of Storr. It isn't a long hike, but it definitely gets busy. You can see all of the social trails in this photo. We didn't start until about 4:30 pm, so most people were on their way down.
Old Man Of Storr from above. This was a beautiful hike and we had really great weather except for some gusty wind.
After our hike, we went to Portree for dinner. At this point, we decided we should try to locate the best sticky toffee pudding in Scotland. The restaurant in Portree couldn't beat the restaurant the previous night in Uig.
After dinner, we drove back up the east side of Skye to the Quirang, which is a band of dramatic cliffs. On our way up the little road, we saw these Scottish Blackface lambs. They were adorably headbutting each other.
The Quirang. That is the road winding up the right side of the picture. There are big yellow bins at the top and bottom of the steepest section with "salt and grit." Should you decide to drive the road in the winter, you are welcome to salt the road yourself! It was beautiful up there, but it was so windy that we didn't linger very long.
The next day, we woke up to rain and gloom. We drove west on Skye, found a coffee shop and took a bit to figure out what we wanted to do while eating a pastry. On our way into the shop, we chatted with a young woman from Glasgow who was bike touring on Skye. It made me want to come back with my bike, even with the bad weather.
We ended up going to
Dun Beag Broch, which is a Bronze Age ruin of a dwelling and, a little further from the road, a fort.
This is the dwelling (or...broch) from the outside. Definitely a defensible position!
The inside of the dwelling. It was double-walled and would have had a wooden structure above the stone walls.
From the house, we walked across the valley to the hill in the distance. There is a lump on it that is almost in the center of the photo that is the remains of a fort called Dun Mor.
The walls of the fort.
The view from Dun Mor.
Looking down from the fort towards the broch.
Scots are very direct about keeping your dog on leash when hiking.
We drove around to the south part of Skye. I wanted to go visit another shop where a woman sells yarn she spins from wool from her own flock of Jacob Sheep. We ate amazing seafood at a little shack by the side of the road. Then, before leaving Skye, we stopped briefly at this coffee shop and at the Talisker Distillery.
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