Our Travel Journal: Isle of Skye, Totternish Peninsula

An outstanding Scottish breakfast and then off to explore.

Today our intent was to drive a loop around the Trotternish Peninsula. This is the northern most appendage of the Isle of Skye. To put this in perspective we currently are closer to the Arctic Circle than are Alaska's Aleutian Islands and only slightly more south than Churchill Manitoba. Today Scotland showed what the weather can be like up here. Cold, windy and rainy. Most of the day we only dealt with the cold and wind, but once back in the Bed and Breakfast the heavens have opened up. So here we are in our cozy solarium, I'm working on this journal page while Sandy is keeping in touch with our friends and family.

Our first stop of the day was at a rock formation referred to as the "The Old Man of Storr". The little pillar (not little at all once you get closer to it) is supposed to be the old man. I personally don't see it, but the views were worth the visit.

A waterfall next to the old man

The Lealt Gorge was about as dramatic as things can get, pouring over three cascades and then rushing down the gorge, cutting the sea cliffs to the waters of the Invers Bay.

Down the road we found the Kilt Rock. Looking past the waterfall one sees the flared kilt of the rock formed by the hard volcanic rock sitting atop and protecting the softer sandstone. The water fall plunging 180 feet to the Little Minch (the straight of water between Skye and the Outer Hebrides) was worth the stop even without Kilt Rock!

The Quirang is a mountainous area a little inland on the peninsula. The mountains are treeless but still green. And, again, sheep everywhere.

A cemetery in the Quirang.

Driving back to the shore we stopped at the Duntulm Ruined Castle. This is more of a military lookout than a castle. Right on the tip of the peninsula it has a view in every direction. It was built and controlled by the Clan MaCarthers. Emigrants from this clan to the United States produced two famous generals, Arthur and Douglas. But, in Skye this minor clan owed its allegiance to the much larger and stronger Clan MacDonald. They were the hereditary pipers for the MacDonalds.

Cold and windy we stopped by an old church and enjoyed a picnic in the car

The Skye Museum of Island Life has some recreated stone walled thatched roof buildings, depicting the lives of the Skye islanders as they would have been 150 years ago. This isle is beautiful today, but I'm not sure I would have liked it back then. Sandy was amazed at all the work that went into processing wool just to keep the men in skirts.

Behind the museum village is a graveyard with a monument to Flora MacDonald. She is a Scottish National Hero, as she is credited with saving the life of "Bonnie Prince Charlie" by hiding him from the English (and their Scottish allies) until the French could whisk him away.

The last stop of the day was at the Fairy Glen, Quite a remarkable place with dozens of conical shaped hills just made for walking through. There is even a fairy castle. Where are the fairies? Well, now, the locals will tell you that whenever humans show up in the glen they disguise themselves as sheep. This means that there are a boatload of fairies in these hills.