Our third full day on Skye. The weather continues to be kind, although the northerly breeze is quite bracing. As you'll see from some of the pics, there are plenty of sunny hours.
Arrival day, Saturday was filled by stocking our larder at the local Co-op (a grocery chain of supermarkets), traipsing down to the village centre on foot for a quick look around, and having a drink at two of the local pubs, the latter of which, The Isles, also provided us with our evening meal, which we ate with the sun, still high in the Skye, shining through the glickedy (newly invented word) glass windows. Inspired by trying to avoid the straight steep climb up the road back to our cottage, we happened upon a local shortcut which has turned out to be a great find, so far.
Sunday, fine again! Skye has five peninsulas and we opted to circumnavigate the largest and most easterly, known as Trotternish. But first, the washing, which had been accumulating in our laundry bag which we carry on all trips. The cottage has a washing machine and uses direct solar and wind energy for clothes drying. This was just the right day for it, with the sun and breeze doing their job while we were out enjoying the scenery.
Drying nicely!
View to the east from our cottage.
In the UK they have Bank Holiday Weekends, which seem to be long weekends whose date is movable, as rarely is the date defined on signs and notices. Accordingly we did not know that this last weekend in May was designated as such. The inevitable flow-on effect is that accommodation is booked out and lots of people are travelling to visit out of the way places such as Skye. We were so glad we'd pre-booked our cottage. Many places we hoped to access on Sunday or Monday were simply inaccessible, as the sunny weather, narrow roads and dearth of car parking space in reasonable proximity to the attraction thwarted us and no doubt many others.
And so to the Trotternish peninsula whose circumnavigation by car took up most of the Sunday afternoon. I followed this up with a one hour hike around the local headland and then in the evening we headed down to The Isles for dinner again.
A local residence in its magnificent setting on the edge of the bay in Portree.
Monday, fine again. A trip to the Waternish Peninsula (the next in sequence to the west) was decided. We've adopted the habit of dropping in daily to a pub or similar for a soup and bread roll lunch and this time the Stein Inn took our fancy especially as its setting is seductive and it's the only one for miles around anyway.
The Inn at Stein.
Mary looking across the loch from our lunch table.
As some of you will know, for a couple of hundred years up to the beginning of the 17th century, this peninsula and surrounding inlets, lochs and islands were the scene of an ongoing bloody feud between the MacLeods and the MacDonalds. Among one of the more startling atrocities committed was the killing in about 1576 by suffocation of 359 MacDonald clan people, men, women and children, by raiders of the MacLeod clan on the island of Eig. The MacDonald clanspeople lived on Eig and used a cave as their (Christian) church and were trapped and killed inside when the MacLeod raiders set a huge fire at the mouth of the cave. Retribution was inevitable and in 1578 MacDonald raiders trapped most of the population of the MacLeod village of Trumpan inside their stone walled (Christian) church and set fire to the roof. Only one young girl survived and she escaped to raise the alarm. The MacDonald raiders had arrived by eight boats and seemingly miscalculated the tide for when they rushed back to their boats they found them high and dry. Even worse was the arrival of a force of MacLeods who massacred the raiders to a man. The remains of the Trumpan Church exist today, although the village was never to recover.
Mary's photo of the Trumpan church ruins.
We meandered naturally from Trumpan to the ancient seat of the MacLeod clan, Dunvegan Castle, still occupied today by the clan chieftain. We did the castle tour which we found interesting especially because it contained documents relating some of the history of the forced relocation of many Skye inhabitants to Australia in the mid nineteenth century due to their inability to secure a living on the island. Geelong was specifically mentioned as a destination which interested Mary, whose close relations in Geelong have the MacDonald surname. Photography was not permitted in the castle. It has a particularly good stone dungeon whose only access appears to be through the floor of an alcove. A presumed mannequin occupies the tiny floor space about three metres directly below the entrance. Maybe the dungeon will be listed on Airbnb one day.
Mary's photo of part of the exterior of Dunvegan castle.
Usually we fit in at least one decent walk each day and we managed one straight after the castle visit by meandering in a loop through bushland on a designated track, encountering the usual cluster of wildflowers enroute.
Short movie: Mary leading the way through the gorse and forest:
Bluebells along the track.
After all of this we drove back home over a narrow mountain track and dropped in to the local supermarket to pick up dinner, a frozen pizza. One of the great things about having your own rented cottage is that you don't have to eat out every night. The pizza went down well with a glass or two of red. We both slept soundly until about 08:30 on Tuesday, as we've found we tend to do here. Go to bed before sundown and rise after sunrise.
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Kev Long
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The technical stuff:
Our main iPad is connecting to the Internet mainly through a cellular connection provided (prepaid, 3gb for three months for £16) by the UK "Three" network. On high ground and in town environments this connection has so far proven quite good but, as in Australia, some places lack good coverage so no or poor connection. There are quite a few WiFi options available too although not always advertised. Just ask if you're unsure if available. All except two of our accommodation reservations include free WiFi which is of course the preferred method of transferring large amounts of data but I have been posting these blogs and their images sometimes using only a cellular connection either from inside our accommodation or on the roadside.
Mary's iPhone is operating using an Australian SIM card (Optus prepaid) which is roaming while in the UK and gives us the ability to make phone calls (not cheap) and send and receive SMS. It also uses WiFi, can connect directly to the Internet through the local cellular system (expensive), and use a Personal Hot Spot provided by the iPad (essentially free as the iPad connection is prepaid).
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