Isle of Skye - Day 1

Sunday, 15 September 2019

We woke up in our tiny house to better weather than we went to sleep in.  According to Sandy, the proprietor of this property, yesterday was bad weather even to Scotland standards.

Today we drive to the Isle of Skye, another Heibrides island in Scotland.

About 20 minutes into the drive, there was a large parking lot with a bronze statue on it.  By the way, as we travel around Scotland we see many motorcycles.  When we are on the road like this, away from our motorcycles, we also look at the bikers on the road with envy.  To be honest, I do not envy these riders up here in Scotland.  Yes the scenery is beautiful, but the temperature is in the 50's and it is raining all the time.  The roads are narrow with the chance of a head-on collision around every turn.  All I can say is, "Good on them," as I drive past them.

Anyway, the bronze statue standing in this incredible scenery is the Commando Memorial remembering the British fallen heroes of World War II.  These were the first elite military corpsmen created by Winston Churchill.

Near the monument is the Garden of Remembrance, honoring British Commandos who died in more recent conflicts.  It looked like there were many containers holding ashes here.

Back on the road and back to some amazing scenery.

We crossed the Skye Bridge and was on the Isle of Skye.  FIrst stop is a brewery at the base of the Cuilin Hills aptly called Cullin Brewery.  Here we are with our flight of beer.

Cullin Brewery, Isle of Sky, Scotland

After the flight and some lunch (me: mussels; Tim: chicken wings), we were off to find the trailhead for a hike called "Fairy Pools."  In about 25 minutes we were at the Fairy Pools parking lot.  There was a parking lot attendant collecting £5 to park, but before he took our money, he wanted to be sure we knew that we would have to cross a river where our feet would get wet.  Like yesterday, we weren't willing to get wet, so we turned around and headed to our AirBnB just outside Portree.

Even though we didn't hike, the scenery was beautiful.

On the way to the hike that we didn't hike, Tim spotted a cemetary, so on the way back we took the road down to it.  It wound up that Tim didn't care about the cemetary, but old boats that he noticed near it.  Here are the cool photos he took of them.

From there, we stopped at a supermarket in Portree on the way to our AirBnB and then drove up a one lane road for 3 miles until we arrived at our pod.  We are spending the next two nights in this pod.

We unpacked and got settled into the pod.  We ate dinner and watched some TV and blogged before heading to bed.  Tomorrow we explore the Isle of Skye.