It's such a beautiful name for a place... and it's a beautiful place too. I read somewhere that Skye comes from the combination of the Norse word for cloud and the Gaelic word for Island. That's a good name, but does not do justice to the weather. If there was a word that meant "cloud-wind-rain-sun-repeat," that would be most accurate, but probably not as poetic.
We arrived Friday in Aberdeen, met up with Tom and Sonja, then took our rental car across Scotland, over the Highlands, past Loch Ness, and over the bridge to Skye. In rain that seemed to shoot horizontally (fall is not really the right word), we got to the cottage where we'd spend the next four days. It seemed like a grandma had just walked out the door and left the place to us. The cottage had pink wallpaper, purple curtains, doilies and decorative plates on the walls, and that flowery air-freshener scent that belongs to grandmas exclusively. Brian and I slept on a too-small and too-firm bed in the attic room where it was really easy to whack your head on the ceiling if you weren't careful. It had two cushy couches and a living room fireplace where you could sit and hear the rain pound the house. It was just right.
Our routine on Skye went something like this: make breakfast and sit around drinking tea and deciding where to go that day. Then we suit up in rain jackets and rubber boots and head out in the car. We'd stop at some beautiful, rugged, location and hike out, and up, and down again. Sometimes the wind almost blew us over. Sometimes the sun came out. We went on beaches and through forests and up the side of a mountain. Then we'd have to stop at a pub for lunch before we did it all again in the afternoon. We were greatly aided by the recommendations of our friend Alec, a science teacher at the international school who used to own a boat repair shop on Skye and wrote up his own little travel guide for us.
I think the photos can show you the sights much better than I can write about them, so here they are:
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| At Neist point |
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| Near Coral Beach |
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| Coral Beach |
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| Hiking up to the Old Man of Storr |
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| This is our cottage |
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| Gale force winds |
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| Storr |
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| Near Portree Harbor |
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| Kilt Rock |
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