Journey to Skye

April 14th, we arrive in Inverness. Above left is the view from our B&B. It was cool and very windy. We stayed at Sunnyholm Guest House and our hostess Agness was very nice. Directly left is the rental car. Thank heavens the Avis agent talked us into an automatic. The funniest part about this day was my a) trying to start the car, b) trying to turn off the emergency brake and of course c) learning how to drive on the wrong side of the road from the wrong side of the car. I wasn't sure Mom would survive. After we got out of town and into the countryside I finally figured it out.

a) you start the car with a card, not a key and it goes into a slot on the dash
b) the emergency brake is a small unmarked handle on the dash, not on the floor or in the center console
c) what can I say?

As we leave Inverness and head down Loch Ness we encountered a herd of wild mountain goats crossing the road. Fortunately no one was injured, but I think one of the goats might have been swearing at me.


This is me on the shore of Loch Ness. It's pretty windy, you can really hear it on the video I shot. But it was so beautiful. We drove about 20 miles down the coast of the Loch and there was lots of gorse blooming. It's really pretty, but it has thorns.

This is Urquhart Castle. It's on the shores of Loch Ness. http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/drumnadrochit/urquhart/ From here we turn and head west towards the cost and our destination of Plockton.

As we near the coast we pass another castle, Eilean Donan. This was used in the movie Highlander for those of you who are fans. http://www.eileandonancastle.com/ It was the prettiest castle we saw while in Scotland. (We didn't get to Edinburgh castle but I'll tell that story a little later)
We were able to tour more of this castle than any of the others we visited. The kitchen area was especially interesting as it was set up with displays depicting actual preparation and cooking of the period.

On to Plockton.

Plockton was not as picturesque as I was anticipating. It was used as a movie location for a small cult film from the 70's called "The Wicker Man". In the movie it looks like a very pretty harbor front village. It is much less colorful not and there are no shops to speak of. There is one newsagent and a gallery, but not much else. We stayed at Tigh-nan-Saor B&B. Maybe they were having an off weekend, but the owner was very brusqe, the guest lounge was not available so we had to sit in our room watching bad tv on a 13" screen. And I had the pleasure of listening to the neighbor teenage daughter and her friend giggling until about 2am. Not a great experience. The redeeming virtue is the view out of our window. When the tide comes in it is so pretty. They still have a few palm trees here, but most of them seem to have died. It rained right after we got to the B&B. Right after is stopped there was a rainbow for just a moment. I was able to get a picture just before it faded. We got up the next morning, ate breakfast (food was good) and headed for Skye.