Day 8: Scotland vacation 2007

We started pretty early so we could cover as much of the Isle of Skye as possible that day, but the north end, where we were staying, was almost completely obscured by thick fog, or haar, as the locals call it. We went to the Museum of Island Life first, and John got to try out his Gaelic on the man at the desk. While John and I wandered around the cottages, looking at the displays and reading signs, Hannah befriended a stray cat and drank some cocoa.



The thatched cottages were very interesting, but it was easy to see that the farmers and fishermen didn’t have an easy life. Just the wind and cold would have sent me packing after one day, but I’m a wuss that way.



The Museum was within walking (and viewing) distance of the graveyard where Flora MacDonald, the young lady who helped Bonnie Prince Charlie escape after the disaster at Culloden, is buried, but we didn’t go that far. We were ready to get back in the car. Then we drove around the north end of the island and up over the Quiraing. John wanted to get out and explore, and he kept extorting Hannah and I “just a little farther”. We ended up wading across a soggy expanse of sheep-poop covered marsh, thanks to John’s supernatural ability to take us into inhospitable environments.



See that big rocky thing on the right in the photo below? That’s where we had just been swimming in sheep excrement.



From there we traveled back down the east coast to Lealt Falls (still too foggy to see) and on to Portree for a quick and delicious Chinese take-away lunch.



Then we hopped back in the car to cross to the west side of the island to tour the Talisker Distillery. Despite the tour being held in English, we weren’t able to learn much thanks to the deafeningly loud machines we were inspecting. John enjoyed his complementary drink, though. He also picked up a tip in the shop that it would be cheaper to buy a bottle of Talisker in Germany than there, thanks to the difference in local taxes.



Skye is really not that big of an island, but it has lots of mountainous regions, so there are only so many places they could put roads in. Also, there are many places where the roads are what they call “single-track”, which means what it says: one lane. But there are lots of little passing places on the single-track roads, so if you meet another car, one of you should pull in and let the other one by. Most people we encountered were pretty courteous drivers, so it wasn’t a big deal, except you don’t make such good time as you might have imagined, given the size of the island.

Here is where we edged the Cuillins going back to the east side of the island and the main road heading south. Magnificent!



The main reason we headed south on this day was so John could visit the Gaelic College there and maybe get some more books and materials for his self-study of Gaelic. We turned in at the new campus, which is right on the shore, and let Hannah poke around near the water.



It turns out that the bookstore was at the old campus, though, so John ran over there while we hung out at the beach, and later in the parking lot (John had the keys, so we couldn’t wait in the car). From there we headed back north, stopping at the Old Bridge at Sligachan.



John let Hannah play down near the water while he took some photos, which I thought was a bad idea, but I was overruled. And just as I foresaw, sploosh!



Fortunately, I had taken to packing extra clothes for Hannah after the initial barf-fest in Edinburgh, but she had to change out in the open next to the car. We made it back to Portree in plenty of time to eat a hot dinner before going to a ceilidh. According to the guide we bought at the Museum of Island Life, “the word ceilidh in Gaelic means a small homely [sic] gathering of friends. In the days before the arrival of radio and television, it was customary for neighbours to meet together in the long winter evenings and to make their own entertainment.” John and I enjoyed the performances, although we agreed with Hannah that maybe the venue was a little small for the bagpipes. Imagine putting your head inside a steel barrel and allowing someone to beat on it; that’s how loud it was. But the singer, the fiddlers, the accordionist, and especially the clarsach (harp) player were just wonderful. Unfortunately, we were dumb and neglected to put an extra pair of batteries in our camera bag, so we ran out of juice after about 2 minutes. D’oh! John ran out to the car during the intermission, so we managed to get a few photos (still dim, darn it!) and a couple of video clips after the break.

This lady was amazing.



As evidenced here. (I loved how the accordionist looked completely bored while she was playing. Oh, the ennui of playing a complicated song on a complicated instrument. *sigh!*)



There was even a dancer (plus brain-damagingly loud bagpipes). The fiddler was the emcee, and she kept teasing the bagpiper about his dreadlocks. How cool is that--a bagpiper wearing traditional kilt and dreadlocks!



We were scheduled to catch an early ferry off the island the next morning, and to get to the ferry we’d have to drive alllll the way back down to the southern tip, so we left before the end in order to get a little sleep before our very long last day in Scotland. The haar had rolled in again, and it took us about an hour to get back to the B&B, which was actually run out of someone’s home, but she assured us that they never locked the door. So of course it was locked when we got there, late, and we had to tap on a window to get in. Such is the life of the world traveler.