Scotland - Day 6 Skye

This morning we woke to bright skies and a lovely view of the mountains from the breakfast room window. We said goodbye to our hosts and Ollie the collie and took a short drive through Glen Coe. We had only skirted around the Glen previously. The mountains were immense and Martin stopped the car every mile or so to jump out and capture the beauty on camera. We were so fortunate to see the Glen in sunshine.

From here we drove north through Fort William and out onto the Inverness Road. I had read about the Gondola on the Nevis Range so we decided to bite the bullet and take a ride. James stood at the entrance and begged to be able to go on it! What could we say?! I’m so glad we did because the views of Fort William and the Great Glen were terrific and the sun still shining although with lots of high patchy cloud. We went really high to the next station up the mountain and from there we hiked to a higher point. Apparently you can see the ranges of Skye on a clear day. We looked but it wasn’t that clear! It was very cold and windy up there so we hiked back down and were pleased to get back into a relatively warm gondola car. James was excited to be soaring over all the waterfalls instead of just passing them in the car or having to walk uphill to one!

The road turned west and we set off for Skye. I sang the ‘Skye Boat Song’ to James and he laughed a lot but did keep asking me to sing it! The scenery was grand but not really spectacular until we got to the Glen Shiel. These mountains soared over us and were almost straight up! Massive. We stopped at least a dozen times along this road for Martin to take photos and video! James was asleep so I mostly stayed in the car with him. Much warmer with my heated seat!

Along the way we stopped at Eilean Donan castle, a building ruined in 1719 and rebuilt in the 1930’s. Quite interesting from the outside but we didn’t go in. A man in a kilt was playing the bagpipes which was great.
We arrived into Portree, the largest village on Skye, at about 4pm. We arranged to meet Martin’s uncle and aunt, Howard and Jenny and their friends for dinner at a village hotel. We enjoyed the meal and James was fairly good, despite being extremely tired and wriggly, and therefore rewarded with sticky toffee pudding for "pudding". He had had a big day but was still able to polish that off very quickly!

We are staying at The Pink Guest House right on the harbour wall in Quay Street for the night. Thankfully not as pink as I had begun to fear! Our room is at the very top under the roof and Martin has cracked his head on the sloping ceiling a few times now. The view from the window of the little harbour is really sweet with all different coloured boats on the water. James claims the green one as his favourite.

I hope both my boys are fast asleep now. We have another day full of adventures and new things lined up for tomorrow.