From Torridon we headed south to do a tour of Isle of Skye. It had rained hard the night before, and was still quite overcast in the morning but started to clear as we drove.
The rain seemed to create mini waterfalls everywhere we looked.
A lot of Scotland is peaks and meadows but quite a few valleys or glens as they call them, and a number of the glens are wooded. As we turned into a glen, I could see the back end of an animal on the road going off into the woods and I thought it was a cow. As we got closer we could see it was a stag and it started to move deeper into the woods where another stag was waiting for it. Pretty cool to see and unfortunately we didn’t have our telephoto camera out at the time so we didn’t get the best pictures.
Old Sligachan Bridge
We had two main trails we wanted to hike on Isle of Skye, Old Man of Storr and Fairy Glen, but we were also planning on stopping at anything that caught our eye. This old bridge was one such thing and we stopped to take some pictures and check it out.
The little inn and shop next to it that we parked at had this old red English telephone booth setup as a little exchange library which we thought was pretty cute. Turns out we saw this in a number of places in Scotland. Great idea for the old phone booths.
The Old Man of Storr
Probably the most famous rock formation on Isle of Skye and therefore very popular. It is quite a hike to get up to the rocks and then even past it to the lookout rocks, but it is stunning and the pictures tell the story.
Northern Coast
From there we continued driving along the coast heading north and looping around the top of the isle to reach Fairy Glen and taking in a few stops along the way.
Lealt Falls and An Leth-allt Viewpoint, complete with a bag piper.
Kilt Rock Viewpoint, which actually had a bigger and easier waterfall to view.
Fairy Glen
A fairly short walk to a little glen with smaller grass covered rock formations on them but with great views of the surrounding meadows, hills, and valleys.
You could climb to the top of the tallest rock formation for a good view in all directions.
The view in the four different directions.
Enjoying some fish and chips before we headed off the island.
Eilean Donan Castle
Just south of the bridge off of Isle of Skye is the Eilean Donon castle. We had seen a picture of it at the Loch Ness gift store and thought it was a picture worthy stop since it was on our way.
What we didn’t know until we got there, was that this castle was the castle for the MacRae Clan and that there was a sign about Canadian Lt. Col. John McRae explaining the famous poem he wrote called In Flanders Fields. Next to it was a plaque with the names of all the MacRaes (or McRaes) that were killed in World War I whether from Scotland, Canada, US, Australia, etc.
