Considering that I have now been living in Scotland for 10 months, I have done a very poor job of documenting any of that on this blog. The reason is pretty simple: I've still been exploring the country and most of the places I've been are ones that I keep returning to and finding out new information about (this ties in with me being a totally neurotic writer but let's leave it with the easy explanation).
I have, however, just finished a two week long journey around the country, and there's a highlight that I feel confident writing about now. It's an isle in the northwest called Skye and it is easily the most gorgeous place I've seen in Scotland.
To get to and around Skye, you definitely want a car. There are buses that could get you there and between the towns, but that won't do you much good with seeing the sights and scenery. My parents were over visiting for a couple of weeks, and we rented a car in Inverness to drive down around Loch Ness where we stayed one night, then over to Skye for two more nights.
Driving in Scotland
Now, I'm a decent driver (if you have any opinions on that which are not glowing reviews then you can just keep them to yourself), but some of the roads in the Scottish countryside are absolutely ridiculous. To start with, no matter where you go whether cities or wilderness, the roads are narrow. A lot more narrow than we'd be used to in America, anyway. You're also driving on the left hand side, of course, and throughout Scotland they favor roundabouts over traffic lights. I mean roundabout after roundabout, and I despise roundabouts, especially some of the large ones with eight various exits. I like a stop light or two to collect my thoughts and reassess my whereabouts rather than having to merge into a circle of heavy traffic every other minute, you know?!
Luckily in Skye, there are a lot less roundabouts to be found, but what you have instead are single track roads. This means exactly what you would think it does. Two cars are coming from opposite directions down one single lane. There are "passing places" along the way where you can pull to the side if you see a car coming at you or heading your way from up ahead. If the passing place is on your left, it's your job to pull into it; if it's on your right, you wait on the main track and they need to pull aside into it.
The main problem here is that there are a lot of windy roads and steep hills, so there's a very good chance you may come around a bend or over a peak and find yourself facing another vehicle. This is why it's important to keep your eyes out far ahead to anticipate cars, and also to drive slowly and warily. Yes, the national speed limit is 60 (and most roads in the country just follow the national speed- you can tell when you're coming out of towns and there's a sign with a slash through it that you can move back up to 60 again), but that's not what you want to be driving around a single track bend.
Since my parents had never driven on the left side of the road before, my mom is the world's most nervous driver on top of that, and Lewis doesn't have his license, that left all the driving to me. Thankfully it's a quiet isle and you're more likely to hit one of the sheep casually strolling across the road than another car most of the time, so we got by fine.
Day 1 Eiliean Donan Castle, Portree, Old Man of Storr, Kilt Rock, & Kilmuir
Technically it's not IN Skye, but on the way there is, in my opinion, the most scenic castle in Scotland. It's the one you'll find on postcards and photos and is called Eilean Donan.
It's set over the water in a place called Dornie about 15 minutes before you reach Kyle of Localsh (the last town before you cross into Skye) and about an hour's drive west from the bottom of Loch Ness. We were there on a grey, foggy day which actually made it look sort of ominous and cool.
The interior was all refurnished, so the rooms were nice to look at. The walls were stone, and there was a big banqueting hall with paintings, tartan carpeting, a chandelier, and a long wooden table. Unfortunately there was no photography allowed inside the main castle (I snuck a photo in the dining hall but it's too blurry to post).
Afterwards, we continued on and drove over the bridge to Skye. From there, it was around another hour to reach Portree, the town where we decided to base ourselves. I would recommend anyone else base themselves there as well. It's about as central as you'll get to all the main sights, and the town itself is very cute. There's a gorgeous harbor with colorful painted houses and boats out on the water.
We stayed in our own little place with Skye Holiday Apartments. It was perfect! They had sent us a code a few weeks prior which we used to unlock a key box outside Apartment #4 and let ourselves in. No checking in or anything like that. There were two bedrooms (Lewis and I got to share the twin like kids), a nice kitchen complete with cooking appliances, coffee and tea, dishwasher, and washing machine, and a living room with couches, board games, books, TV, and a wooden balcony with a table outside (which I'd have loved to use if it had ever stopped raining). There was also a barbeque area outside, but again, the weather wasn't very cooperative.
Skye is extremely popular among the Scots. Every time I mention it to a Scottish person they immediately start gushing about how beautiful it is. Due to this and the fact that we went over the "summer" (a term I use loosely in Scotland), accommodation was booked up very far in advance. We struggled a little to find a nice place and we booked months ahead of time, so I would suggest looking early.
After settling in and finding some dinner (maybe because we didn't plan ahead for meals on this part of the trip and skipped the expensive options, but the places we ended up eating in Portree had zero charm unfortunately- this first one looked like a truck stop), we got back in the car to drive north and make a loop around the main sights. It was around 7 by the time we set out, but since Scotland is so far north, it stays light out until 11 during the summer, allowing for much longer days of sightseeing.
It would have taken around an hour to drive up and around the coast in a loop from Portree, but of course we stopped at the sights to get out of the car and take photos too. The first one we came to was the Old Man of Storr.
It's a cliffside rock formation and not something we realized was a hike. It was chilly and we had been doing a lot of walking over the past week, so we decided to just walk up part of the way for some pictures. In fact, the rock itself doesn't look that impressive from where we were standing. You're better off stopping on the road while you're heading towards it and taking a profile shot (like above). What was possibly better was the view on the other side of the cliff across the water where the sun was lighting up the land on the opposite bank.
Next up was Kilt Rock, a waterfall streaming down from a cliff. This was pretty but midway through our stop we were hit with a barrage of rain and had to run back to the car.
We accidentally bypassed Quiraing next while going through Staffin. It's basically a pass through the mountains, but the views (as far as I can tell from photos) look similar to what we were seeing by driving along the coast anyway.
We stopped next in Kilmuir where there's a museum about island life back in the older days. It was obviously closed at this time, but I was mostly interested in seeing the traditional houses which were visible from the parking lot.
Right up the path from there was an old graveyard that holds a famous Scottish grave of a woman named Flora Macdonald. Without giving a history lesson (because I plan to do that when I write about the Battle of Culloden anyway), this woman housed the Scottish heir to the throne, Bonnie Prince Charlie, after his men lost at Culloden and he fled into hiding. He eventually escaped Scotland, but Flora Macdonald has been honored in history since that time.
I totally wanted to stop at the Fairy Glen on the way back down, but we passed through Uig and saw no signs directing us along the way. Phone signal is scarce in Skye let alone mobile data, and the GPS was old and useless, so we missed that too. Anyway the light was fading, so we just headed back to Portree and I had a glass of Ardbeg before getting to sleep.
Day 2 Dunvegan Castle, Talisker Distillery, & Fairy Pools
Lewis was awesome enough to cook us all breakfast at the apartment the following morning, which was a win for everyone because my parents got to save money and I got to sleep in.
We started our day off driving a half hour west to Dunvegan, the site of another castle.
Dunvegan Castle is still a residence (the owner has a flat on the top floor right above where hundreds of tourists pour through his home everyday) which annoyingly means it's another one where no photos are allowed. It has a nice entry stairwell, furnished rooms, and its very own stone dungeon where prisoners were thrown down into a pit right next to the celebratory dining hall.
The real highlight though were the castle gardens. They were separated into four themed sections- water, woodland, walled, and round- and they were gorgeous.
Water Garden
Woodland walk
Round Garden
Walled Garden
We had to take off soon after to drive another half hour south and reach the Talisker Distillery for our 2:00 tour. By "our", I mean mine and Lewis's, because my parents don't drink and don't have even the slightest interest in whiskey (more like an active dislike of anything alcohol-related).
Lewis isn't actually a huge fan of Talisker, although he loves whiskey in general (more along the lines of Oban or Dalwhinnie). I'm the one who is into the smoky Islay whiskies and anything peaty. Talisker, Laphroig, and Lagavulin are my absolute favorites. Actually, I hadn't been on a distillery tour yet, so I was extra excited that my first one would be at one of my favorite distilleries. The distillery itself, the only one on Skye, was cute and scenic (like all of Skye).
The tour took about 45 minutes and took us through the process. It starts with drying the barley and lighting peat fires underneath to give it that smokiness, then it's taken to the vats for heating and malting. All of this is very similar to the process of making beer which I've seen on a few brewery tours.
Thankfully the windows were open in the room with the huge vats, because the smell isn't at all pleasant. However, the next room we were taken into held all of the wooden barrels that they use for fermentation legitimately smelled like banana pancakes and I loved it. Talisker insists on continuing to use wooden barrels as opposed to the longer-lasting steel used by other distilleries because they don't want anything affecting the taste of their whiskey (PS. being in Scotland, I'm meant to spell it "whisky" without the "e", so sorry for being American here).
Finally is distillation, where the mixture is heated to such a high temperature that it becomes steam and travels up through some pipes to outdoor barrels, where the cool air turns it back into liquid and it gains a higher alcohol content. Every batch then needs to be measured, and anything too high or low in percentage will be put back through distillation until it's right.
After seeing the whole process, we went into a storage area where we could see all of the barrels sitting to age.
A few in there were from 1979. Generally Talisker only ages their whiskey up to 30 years, so this was a special selection that was going to be sold at 37 years and go at about £1000 a bottle. I wonder what it's like to have so much money that you can afford to drop a grand+ on one bottle of alcohol. I mean, do you drink it a sip at a time over the course of a year? Kill it in one epic baller night? Showcase it forever? What do you even do with something that expensive? These are dilemmas I don't think I could handle. I still have a beer in my fridge that I spent 9 pounds on a month ago and can't bring myself to drink yet because I'm waiting for the perfect moment.
After all of this buildup, we finally had the tasting portion of the tour. Unfortunately, unlike the brewery tours I've taken, we were only given one glass each of Talisker Storm. I'd actually never tried the Storm brand, but I really enjoyed it. It's actually smokier than any one year in particular, because they've taken different batches and years and mixed them together. I liked it so much that I decided to use my 5 pound off voucher at the gift shop and buy myself a bottle. (On that note, the tour only cost 8 pounds, and if you were to buy whiskey afterwards with your discount voucher- which, of course you're going to buy whiskey afterwards- you've actually only spent 3 pounds on the tour itself.)
I imagine if you don't appreciate whiskey then that all was very boring for you to read, so I'll wrap it up and move on. Our last big stop of the day was the sight I was most looking forward to, the fairy pools.
We drove down to Glenbrittle where we eventually came across cars parked all up the street and figured we were in the right area. We actually managed to get a spot in the car park and then set off on the hike. The Cuillens are those mountains you can see all in the background, and there was a winding path through the green grass that made it look like a fairy tale.
Along the way were creeks and waterfalls running over rocks and forming the pools. We walked a decent way down the path, about two miles, and each pool just got prettier.
Eventually we decided to turn back because we all were tired out (mainly my dad who probably hasn't done this much walking in decades) and had reached what seemed like the end, so we drove back to Portree for the night. We had dinner at another characterless restaurant which at least had good food. I had my first "cranachan," a Scottish dessert described as oats, mixed berries, cream, honey, etc. which I had pictured as being like a crumble but actually turned out to be a cup full of whipped cream into which all of the other ingredients were mixed and layered with the berries. I liked it!
Afterwards, we went back to the apartment, I had a few beers, and Lewis, my mom, and I played a game of Trivial Pursuit 1983 edition. My dad declined to play in favor of sitting on the sidelines and just telling us he knew the answer to practically every question anyway. In a shock twist, I won, but it was really due to my mom having bad dice rolls rather than me actually being more knowledgeable (my parents are genius trivia masters).
Day 3 Elgol & Broadford
We had to pack up and leave our cute apartment by 10:30 on the final morning. We left everything in the car and walked back down to the town square (two minutes down the hill from where we were staying) because my dad had seen a cafe (called The Cafe) which served pancakes for breakfast. Apparently he needed restaurant pancakes even though he himself makes the world's greatest pancakes- with chocolate chips- that he totally could have made us at the apartment not like I'm bitter that it never happened or anything.
Afterwards we jumped in the car and started the long drive home. However, we had been given a tip by Lewis's mom to see a great view of the Cuillens from a town called Elgol, so we put it in the GPS and headed down a side road. I expected maybe a 20 minute detour, but I just kept driving and driving up windy single track roads right next to a steep cliffside and I couldn't imagine that we were headed anywhere worth the time it was taking to go out of our way to see. There were hardly even other cars out in this middle of nowhere countryside.
Finally on the middle of a path in an isolated town of scattered houses, the GPS told us we'd reached our destination. I thought this was probably a waste of time, but Lewis said to keep driving down the road. We reached a place to park and could see the mountains and water, but nothing spectacular. However, we decided to just drive down the hill a little further to the sea to park, and all of a sudden I was right in the middle of the most beautiful scenery of the entire trip.
I didn't expect to find a beach with turquoise blue waters and hazy mountains smack in the middle of the Scottish countryside. I could have convinced myself I was Thailand if it weren't for the wind and the jackets and the fact that nobody was swimming.
There were even boat rides and little beachside shacks along the road. I was so happy we had driven out there. It was easily the best view we came across in Skye and totally worth the windy backroads out to find it.
After that, the ride back didn't seem so long, and before I knew it we were back in Broadford, the town near Skye's exit. At the recommendation of a fellow vegetarian ex-coworker, I stopped at a place called Cafe Sia for us to have lunch. They did have a very veggie friendly menu, and my coffee milkshake rocked. I also ordered a quattro formaggi woodfire pizza, and although it didn't look too impressive when it came out, I was raving about it after the first bite. The cheeses were fantastic and the dough was so soft! Go there.
It was sad crossing back over the bridge out of Skye, not only because I enjoyed it so much but because I knew my parents' visit was at its end. What a perfect way to end it though! For the best of Scotland's scenery, Skye is definitely the place to be.