Once again, we found ourselves in downtown Inverness in early morning, to meet our tour guide for the day. Our friends stayed behind to enjoy Inverness, while we embarked on a very long 13-hour day with WOW Tours and our excellent guide Murdoch, aka Mr. Fabulous. What followed was a wonderful experience with perfect weather (again!) and ridiculous scenery, great storytelling, lots of history and geology, and numerous wildlife sightings.
It was a roughly two hour drive from Inverness to the Skye Bridge, passing through some epic scenery along the way, particularly in the Shiel Valley as we neared the bridge. We made a quick washroom stop at a local bakery, where we grabbed another coffee and some delicious cinnamon buns, before passing "over the sea to Skye".
The intimate mini-bus was a nice mix of considerate people, mainly Canadians and Americans, many of whom continued to apologize for the state of things back home. It did threaten to rain a few times but nothing came of it, and other than some strong wind in spots we enjoyed yet another sunny day in Scotland.
We visited the village of Portree, which was crawling with tourists (including us!). While others picked up their pre-arranged lunches at a local art gallery, we ate some sandwiches we had brought as we wandered the streets, lanes and waterfront area.
Heading further north, we toured the Trotternish Peninsula, with stops at the Old Man of Storr, Kilt Rock and the Quiraing. Unfortunately on a tour of this length, we could see lots of scenery but could not do any of the hikes - our plan is to come back and spend a few days on Skye hiking in the area.
Back-tracking through Portree and Sligachan, we ventured further south to visit the Fairy Pools. Here at least we got a good walk in, down and then up to the beautiful series of cascading pools and then the same in reverse.
Departing Skye, we stopped at Eilean Donan Castle and walked across the old stone bridge to wander the grounds. On the drive back to Inverness, we also passed through the "feral goat" area - in spite of jokes about the signage, we were assured that they were quite a serious matter and had been the bane of a number of rental cars over the years.
The Isle of Skye did not disappoint, in spite of a long whirlwind of a day to get there and back. It is definitely somewhere we will return in future and explore in greater depth on our own. Back at the apartment, our friends returned from The Gellions pub and we swapped tales of our day's adventures.
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