Haggis, Highlanders and Hairy Coos

Day 3 of Highlands tour - Isle of Skye - 5th August 2009

Day 3 was going to be spent entirely exploring Skye. It is rather a large island, and we were just going to be on the northern peninsula. We had been told that we were going to be spending more time off the bus, instead of on it today, so that was good. I had been getting a little bus sick for the last two days, nothing major, just some yukky queasy feelings.

Our first stop was at the Sligachan River, where legend has it, that if you put your face into the water for 7 seconds, or 3 continual dunks, you will be blessed with eternal good looks. Colin, our guide was the first to get down amongst the rocks and have a dip, then a few others went. Dan and I both had a go also. I was going to go for the 7 seconds, but the sheer shock of the freezing water meant that I pulled my head straight back out again, so I ended up just doing the 3 dunks. A nice refreshing way to wake ourselves up so early in the morning.

We made an early stop for lunch at the largest town on the island, Portree. There was a highland games event being held in the town and we were all keen to go and have a look at some cabre's being tossed and what not. We wandered up to the entrance and found the £8 entrance fee a little steep, so we missed out. Although it's the largest town on the island, it only has a population of a 1000 people. We managed to find a really nice, cheap, little bakery and the boys had a good go at their sausage rolls. We also purchased some salad rolls for later in the day.

When we were back on the bus we were told an old story about some old giant who liked the ladies, and some of the ladies were stripping for him, or something, and he collapsed. It was unfortunate that when he collapsed he was aroused, and his member was still standing to attention. It is believed that the large mountains on the island are the old giant from when he fell. We stopped at the side of the mountain and we were told that we were going to climb up to the giants old fella which is still sticking straight up in the air. The sheer size of this mountain had me a little worried, but we set off and started the climb up the side of the hill. It was pretty tough going, but we stopped every 15 minutes or so to catch our breaths and take in the amazing views. Ocean views with some little islands scattered around, were clearly visible from the beautifully cloudless weather. After an hour and a bit we finally reached the top; the old mans member; and the views were again absolutely breathtaking. We just sat at the top and relaxed for half an hour, some ate lunch, some climbed up a little further, right up to the rock doodle. After half an hour of relaxing at the summit, we had to climb all the way back down, with the now threat of some very black clouds above our heads. Most of Skye is made up of peat, and it is really sinky, slidy stuff and it you step in the wrong place you are liable to get stuck. Luckily none of us did, but Colin filled us in on some of his other tour people getting themselves into a spot of bother. The walk down was just as hard, cause not only are you going straight down, but you have to continually watch your step so you don't trip on a boulder, or sink into the peat.

We were all exhausted after our morning of climbing mountains, but there was no rest. Our next stop was at a viewpoint of the Kilt Mountains. So named, because they look like the pleats in the back of a kilt. They are cliff faces that go down into the tocean, so it was a little hard to see all of them from the top of them, but they were also pretty cool. Apparently there is a family of seals that live below the viewing platform, but we couldn't see them.

We'd finally reached the most northern point on the Isle of Skye, and it is home to a pretty cool castle, Duntulm Castle. It was home to one of the clans, but after some unfortunate accidents, everyone left and it fell into ruins. The site is unstable, due to it being built on the edge of a cliff, so we couldn't go explore it, but the beach had some great views, so we took some snaps and wandered through the rocks and rockpools. We also managed to find a dead sheep which had been half eaten and was all managled and wool was scatter everywhere. Kind of disturbing but cool at the same time.

On our way to our last stop for the day we ran into the other 5 day tour group whose bus had broken down on the side of the road. So Colin went and dropped us off at our last stop and then went back to take them all down to the pub until someone came to fix the bus. This last stop was another one of my favourites. It is called the Fairy Glen. Home to the little people. We were given some pretty strict rules when we were there, no shouting or carrying on, cause it pisses the little people off, and don't take anything from up there. It was a little valley with rocks arranged in little patterns or words with beautiful green grass. We had to walk into a spiral thinking about bad things on our life, then when we walked out we had to think about good things. Apparently the fairies will help make your life better if you do this. We climbed up into their castle which was basically a big rock on the top of a little hill, and we had to maneuver ourselves around some arwardly placed rocks to get up there. Colin had told us some stories about people that he'd taken there. My favourite was about a Canadian, who ignored Colins advice about not taking anything, and he took a small stone back home to Canada with him. When he returned, he got sick, lost his job, and girlfriend and his life turned to s***. He figured it was the little people making his life crap because he stole a rock. So the Canadian, mailed the stone and a letter explaining evedrything back to Colin, and asked him to return the rock for him. Apparently since the stone was returned, everything is looking much better. Trust in the power of the little people.

We made it back to the hostel a bit earlier than usual and took the time to relax for a bit before heading for dinner. We all ate, then the 6 of us decided to go and visit Catle Moil, the old Viking castle in the town where we were staying. We headed over, and found that we had to trek through some rugged bushland to actually get to the castle, and as the sun was going down we were a bit concerned that we wouldn't be able ot make it back, so we gave up on the idea. We did managed to find our bus parked at a B & B, where Colin was obviously staying, so we decided to decorate the front of the bus with some flowers as a nice wake up surprise for him in the morning.

We went back to the pub to check out the band, but we were all too knackered to hang around, we so ended up having an early night.