Where to start.
We left our hotel in Onich this morning around 9am, and headed North towards the Isle of Skye. The drive was fantastic, we drove through the Great Glen, the few clouds in the sky were hanging low and blowing over the mountain, which looked so cool.
We also went past the Well of the Seven Heads, which I don't know anything about but am planning on looking up as it had this rather eerie monument.
On the radio we found an all Gaelic station that was playing snip its of Hank Williams songs and then discussing it. It was completely random and I so wish I could have understood them.
As we neared the Skye bridge the beautiful Eilean Donan appeared around the corner.
Sitting at the convergence of 3 Lochs, Eilean Donan was a strategic strong hold for hundreds of years. In 1719 the Spanish and some of the Highland clans plotted together to stir up a Jacobite uprising, but as many plans do, it went South and the English blew up the castle using the Spanish troop's gun powder.
It sat in ruins for 200 years, until 1912 when a man named McCrae bought it and rebuilt it for himself. The process took 20 years but the results are amazing.
After we had finished at Eilean Donan it was off to the Isle of Skye. I really underestimated how sparsely populated the Scottish Highlands are, the are many places where you can see for miles all around you and there is hardly a trace of civilization except the road you are diving on.
Speaking of driving on roads...Highland roads are similar to some of the remote places we stayed in England; winding and beautiful, often only wide enough for one car, with pull outs now and then so oncoming traffic can pass each other, and speed limits that are way higher than seems reasonably safe (i.e. 60 mph on a single tract road, with blind corners and deer crossings ever quarter mile). But Scottish drivers are even crazier than the English, I'm fairly sure they have no fear what-so-ever.
But I digress.
It was a fun, short hike to the Fairy Pools and I would have gone twice as far to see them.
I post all these pictures, but I feel like I do these places no justice at all. The Highland landscape is so wild and beautiful. It
demands your admiration.
We spent a few hours at the pools, climbing among them, staring at their amazing color, and even dipping our toes in. Scotland has been having a bit of heat wave so it felt great to cool down.
It was a short drive from the Fairy Pools to our B&B in the harbor town of Portree.
We spent a wonderful evening walking around the harbor, eating a picnic dinner and listening to the bagpipes being played on the corner. I felt like I was living a commercial for travel company.
Tomorrow we discover more of Skye and make our way to Inverness.
P.S. - Today we saw 4 men in kilts, 2 herds of Highland cows (or Heilan' Coos, as they are called) and one red dear :-)
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