Day 10: Skye

When we woke up on Skye this morning it was rather damp and misty, but not raining as hard as it had been when we arrived yesterday evening.

The rain had been so strong yesterday that we hadn't even taken a photo of the outside of the little cottage that we're staying in.

The unpredictability of the weather meant that we didn't have firm plans for today, but we were keen to explore some of the island.

We drove towards a village called Dunvegan initially, which is only a few miles up the road from where we're staying.  There's supposed to be an impressive castle and gardens there, which we were hoping we might get a view of. Unfortunately, it turned out that that wasn't possible. The castle is closed because of the pandemic and the gardens, which are open, would have been £12 each to go in, which didn't feel like a good use of money! We had a pleasant drive though  

After Dunvegan, we followed a smaller road towards the Duirinish peninsula.

This is the westernmost point of the Isle of Skye.

The small road led us to a car park, from where we could walk to a lighthouse on the edge of the peninsula.

The surrounding landscape was quite rocky.

The path was easy to follow though and mostly a concrete surface, which was actually good given how wet the ground was after yesterday's downpours. As you can probably tell, it was another windy day  

There were some cliffs here, although they weren't quite as impressive as the ones we saw on Shetland last week.

In some ways the landscape was quite reminiscent of Iceland, because it was so dark and black.

After about half an hour of walking, we caught sight of the lighthouse in the distance.

This is Neist Point lighthouse, which was built in 1909.

Once we'd finished admiring it, it was time to climb back up to the car. On a clear day you can apparently see the Outer Hebrides from here, but that clearly wasn't going to be possible today!

Our next plan was to drive to a place known as the "Fairy Pools". These are a series of little waterfalls which fall into beautiful rocky blue pools and they're one of the most visited locations on the Isle of Skye. We found the car park without too much difficulty, situated in what looks like it must be a stunning valley if it wasn't quite so misty.

We paid to park but were warned by the car park attendant that we would get our feet a bit wet if we decided to walk to the pools. We set off down the path towards the start of the walk to see what he meant.

A gravel path led us down towards a river, which itself contained a couple of waterfalls. Not quite the fairy pools, but as close as we were destined to get.

The path to the pools involved crossing the river via stepping stones. All the rain yesterday meant that the stepping stones were currently below the water and this was the sight which greeted us of people trying to cross  

We didn't fancy getting our feet this wet - and it looked like it could actually be dangerous if you fell in - so we decided to retrace our steps back up to the car park.

We made our way back to the main road and drove to a place called Sligachan.

The weather looked like it might be brightening up slightly and we could even see the smallest bit of blue sky behind this mountain.

Sligachan is famous for its old bridge and on a clear day there are supposed to be fantastic views from here.

It obviously wasn't a clear day today, but it's still a really pretty location.

And there was certainly a lot of water in the river after yesterday's rain.

From Sligachan we took the main road to Portree, the capital of the island, where we wanted to stock up on some provisions. Once we'd completed our shopping trip we put the postcode of the cottage into our Sat Nav, expecting it to take us back via the main road. Instead, the Sat Nav came up with a presumably slightly shorter route which took us on a single track road through the mountains.

It was quite wild, but there were some beautiful views.

Once we got back to the cottage we had a late lunch and then decided to go out for a stroll around the area where we're staying.

We can't see the sea from the cottage, but it isn't very far away.

The cottage we're staying in is the little white building in this photo.

The coast around here is absolutely beautiful, with tiny little islands dotted in the sea.

There's plenty of wildlife too. We passed some cows...

...a field full of geese...

...and plenty of sheep.

It was still drizzling a bit, but great that the weather had brightened up enough for us to be able to see the view  

We walked for a couple of miles before turning around and heading back to the cottage and a log fire for the evening   The weather doesn't necessarily look much better for tomorrow, but we're going to try to make the best of it.