Skye (the rest of it)

My only excuse for the long delays is that it takes effort to be this witty.

Really.

So, post-Dunvegan, we drove east and then north to follow the coast of the Trotternish peninsula. First stop was the Skye Museum of Island Life: seven old-fashioned thatch cottages, each built and furnished to represent an aspect of life for the people of Skye.

Yet again, no pictures inside, I'm afraid. Was very interesting, though: each cottage had a different theme: among the ones I remember were a kitchen and bedroom, a smithy, a weaver's cottage, a barn, and a ceilidh house. Each was furnished and filled with tools and items that would have been in use through different eras.

There were also wax dummies. Some of them were slightly menacing.

This one, I do remember, was the ceilidh house. It had a number of historical documents and photographs chronicling the history of Skye, as well as more wax dummies and their instruments.

It also had a hot soup machine.

Not very historical, that bit.

And more obligatory coast shots.

C'mon, it's a pretty coast.

I'm not sure Mom liked the driving as much as I did; that was just about my favourite part, because I got to sit back and watch all the pretty scenery (and occasionally clamour to stop and take pictures) without any effort on my part.

All holidays should work like that.

Unfortunately, I don't seem to have any pictures of the road here. It was one heck of a road. I have complained aforetimes, remember, of the quality of the roads in the Highlands and on Skye, and the lack of actual road-qualities thereof. This one was just plain fun: same kind of road, yes, but by far and above the steepest I'd ever met. I think. To my memory, anyway.









The destination of said road was the Quiraing: a landslip with some extraordinarily unique formations. After we drove up the tiny steep road (I found it fun; I doubt Mom did), we came to a nice flat space to park and wander off. Naturally, we did.

I'm going to let the pictures speak for themselves, here.

If you're not very good at interpreting photographs, though, I'll translate for you:

Pretty.

Unfortunately, it was getting late into the afternoon by this time and fairly chill to boot, so we couldn't follow the path all the way up to the Quiraing bits. Still, was a lovely walk, and the play of light and shadow across the landscape was fun to watch, even if my photography skills weren't up to the task of recording it.









Speaking of which, we were trotting along this lovely little path, me snapping away with my little digital camera, and we came across a gentleman with a real camera. If he wasn't a professional, he came awfully close. That was quite a piece of equipment.

My camera got embarrassed and hid for a while after that. Poor camera.

This is the path we followed. It was very narrow, but really quite comfortable. No real fear of falling. I had a great deal of fun jumping over the clefts and rocks and puddles in the way.

Nobody should ever have to grow up.

After the Quiraing, we still had quite a way to travel before we returned to the hostel: complete the coastline of the Trotternish, and then pass through Portree (that's where the ten percent of reasonable road was, in case you wondered), and then... actually, I don't know how we got back to Glenbrittle. We just did, okay?

Anyway, on the way, we made one last stop: Kilt Rock and Mealt Falls.

Again, the day was passing on, so we didn't have too much time, but there was quite enough for me to go camera-happy again (my camera had since recovered from its sudden attack of inferiority on the Quiraing path).

I don't have much to say here, really: there was a path, but it was mostly flooded, so we only wandered along the (very long) pre-path parking area stuffs. Pretty, pretty rocks, though, and, for once, a real waterfall.

And that's that.

I'm on Easter break right now. Started it off by going to Loch Ness and spending four full days there, all by myself. Aren't you proud of me?

I'll have to stick that up here eventually, but as there are 543 unsorted pictures, that will definitely take a while.

Hey, there are even a few of me in there. Isn't that neat?

Back to essays tomorrow. (Actually, the next day, because I'm a terrible person: that leaves me exactly a week to finish it. Wonderful.)

Cheers.

Skye (Dunvegan)

I think I said some time back that, at this rate, a ten-day trip will take me several months to chronicle.

I have no further comment on that point, actually.

Right, no pictures of the Skye hostel, I'm afraid. Shame. Here's a compensation pic of the view from the front door, though. As I said before, it was in a valley. Rather bleak area, really: no view of the sea, very little green, all giant hills. The one you can see in the upper right was, I believe, one of the two such geographical features I deigned to designate a "real mountain" in Scotland.

You didn't know I was geographically biased, did you?

Obligatory shot of coastline from the road. We stopped a lot.

Also, the clouds you see? Those were there the whole time we were on Skye. Still a pretty place, but the sun shone more in Wales.

Admittedly, that was a fourteen-day sample, not a three-day one, but I digress.

If you haven't figured out by now that digression is half the point of this blog, I'm not sure why you're still reading. After all, this wouldn't be half so funny without it, right?

Right?

So this is Dunvegan Castle. Not a particularly interesting castle in comparison with, say, Eilean Donan, but rather nice. As I recall, it was similarly furnished and refurbished -- not to that quality, but certainly better than, say, Castle Menzies with the Ghastly Pink Drawing Room.

It was a hall, and not that ghastly, but I never pass up an opportunity for an obscure reference.

Braemar Castle, on the other hand was Ghastly Pink Full Stop.


Once again, a place where inside photographs were discouraged -- unfortunate, because my memory is already failing on that point: I do recall a rather magnificent series of paintings. The front room was pretty impressive in its own right; quite a grand staircase, a couple of inaccessable lofts with well-placed paintings and mirrors, et cetera.

Aside: one of my lecturers -- the only American one this semester -- has a terrible habit of saying "ekcetra". I'm fighting the urge to correct him.

Lots of views from the outdoorsy bits, though, because everything's prettier with castles.


Or possibly from?








Unfortuntately, I don't actually have that many pictures of the castle's exterior, either. I think I was being lazy on Skye, I think. Only seventy-seven pictures that day.

Still, have some clouds.









The lighting may be poor, but you have to admit that's a pretty impressive entrance.

As an incidental, my vocabulary and syntax will probably deteriorate in this particular entry. I started this hours ago and at this point, my thinking is tea-fueled. As certain friends will quickly point out, it's a very enjoyable state, but a very, very strange one.

I don't feel particularly inclined to provide evidence for that statement. Although I will give you a word: canasta.

So, Dunvegan may have had an impressive front and good refurbishing, but that could hardly compare to Eilean Donan, yes?

Well, Dunvegan did have one advantage: extensive grounds.

We got lost in the gardens several times.











I can't even remember the names of all the gardens. There was a walled garden and water garden, certainly. Here's a picture of the wheel one, which was probably called something else.

It's much cooler from overhead than on the ground.

Also, yes, that is the castle you can see in the background. The grounds are really that big, and nearly all cultured gardens.









Obligatory flower picture. I like flowers. Don't you?













And some out-of-order castle pictures, because I may be lazy at chronicling, but I'm even lazier at formatting.

And because cannons are important.




In a mildly amusing side note, the water garden's waterfall was slightly more substantial than Shin Falls.

Exaggeration, but I was generally unimpressed with Shin Falls insofar as the "falls" part.

Geographically biased, remember?

You may have noticed that, comparatively, this entry isn't obnoxiously long. This is because I'm being lazy again and splitting this into several entries again. The rest of the day may take a few months to get up, given my record.

For those keeping track, this is September 17th.

Meantime, have a cute little bird:

<- Skye (Sleat)

See, I told you I'd get around to this part eventually.

Two months after I started the post is still 'getting around to it.' Very, in fact.

Wait, where is this again?

Emphasis on my laziness aside, two months ago, we started off in Carbisdale (castle youth hostel, fun) and passed through Eilean Donan (prettiest castle in Scotland, far and above). Well, we didn't. In fact, we did all this lovely stuff in September, not December.

At any rate, with the afternoon wearing on (actually, it's nearly evening now), we made our way to Skye.







You may have noticed that Scotland isn't actually very big: we arrived on Skye (there was a bridge) fairly quickly, and since we didn't particularly want to sit around the hostel for five or six hours before going to bed, we decided to wander the island a bit. Particularly, Sleat, a peninsula-ish thingy to the southwest.

Bible school has improved my geographical vocabulary.









Actually, before we got to this pretty stuff, there was quite a bit of boring stuff. There was a long stretch of clear ground with few trees, inland enough that you couldn't see the sea anymore. Red and rocky, and a bit dull on the whole. I saved my camera batteries for the pretty stuff.

Skye is the best example I can think of for the funness of Scottish roads. D'you see how it's a little one-lane thing with no shoulders? That was the condition of the road for 90% of the island, sans exaggeration.







At any rate, the boring stuff didn't last for very long. The road was fun -- we kept having to pull over to the little wobbles in the road to let people pass (everybody on Skye except the tourists waved their thanks). Also ended up pulling over to take pictures a number of times, because the shoreline came into view.

Incidentally, see all those clouds? That was what the weather was like the whole time we were on Skye.

Still pretty, though.

Because of the great entertainment that is editing Blogger posts, I've just lost one of my pictures, and I'm too lazy to put it back up. Don't worry, you're not missing anything, anyway: it was a repeat of the above.

I would tell you again how pretty it is, but do I really need to?












We wandered along this little peninsula-ish thing for, oh, I think an hour or two. Went right to the end of the road -- and when I say end, that's the word I mean. It didn't loop around or anything, just stopped at a house and a shop, and that was the end of it. Had some fun turning around, and then went to do it all over again, up and down and up and down and up and down--

I shouldn't make references most of my readers won't understand. Then again, when has that ever stopped me?






So yes. After Sleat, we went through Broadford -- I believe it's the biggest town on the island apart from Portree, but don't quote me. Before Sleat, we went through Broadford and stopped at Tourist Information and I bought a pretty bracelet of which I have no photographs. (Logical order to a post? Why?)

Then we went on to Glenbrittle. It's a walkers' youth hostel: it's inland, in the middle of a valley with easy access to any number of hills, as valleys often are. We didn't do any of the paths.






I don't think I have any pictures of the hostel -- I'll check later. It was a rattly little thing, but very nice. I believe it was Swiss in design, or possibly Swedish, but neh. We spent quite a bit of time playing Scrabble in the lounge.












This isn't all there is to Skye, by the way. We had a whole free day following, whereupon we got to see the things that will follow in the next post, or possible the next, or maybe the next if I'm being lazy.

(I still haven't done anything about my walk along the canal two weeks ago, or visiting the Falkirk Wheel last week, or seeing Mugdock Castle today.

But that's enough for one day.)

End 16 September '08.

More Weather

Um, have some snow?