Friday 8th June

Woke to a beautiful sunny day & after breakfast set off for Skye across the bridge from Kyle of Lochalsh along with a fleet of campervans & cars, many from Europe. The island is very fine particularly in good weather but the roads are bad enough to give the Maltese a run for their money with plenty of pot holes & minimal width. We went north & then west to see Dunvegan Castle the home of the MacLeod Clan chiefs which they have continuously owned since the 1300s.

It is s a fine castle set in excellent gardens & although it is similar in design to others it has many wonderful portraits of clan chiefs & is still the Scottish home of the present Laird.

The gardens include a couple of waterfalls & a wide range of plants & trees which suggest that the climate is fairly mild considering how far north it is. The outstanding tree was a Korean Pine which has dark blue black vertical cones of about 100mm which come from its branches & contrast strongly with its foliage.

We drove on to Uig, a small port for a car ferry to the outer islands of Lewis & North Uist & some fishing boats & had lunch watching the ferry come in & leave. From there to Portree, the islands capital we took a single lane road with passing places around the top of the island past some impressive rock formations. Unfortunately, so did everybody else including many who had no idea how to drive on such roads, stopping to take photos without any thought for others. Although the distances are short the state of the roads & the drivers make it extremely slow & tiring. When we eventually returned to our B & B we heard that the owners wife does the run every day in a 15 seater Ford van & we felt she definitely earns her money the hard way.