A Day on the Isle of Skye

A Day on the Isle of Skye - June 19th 2015

Nobody would tell me about the surprise last night - it was very frustrating having to wait.  I was so excited that it was hard to get to sleep.  In the morning, when I got up, I saw what the surprise was - another little bear made by Lady Helen which she had brought to keep me company during our holiday!  If I could, I would have shouted out a huge, very loud and very happy WOW!  She was sitting beside Mr Apache's book about the Outer Hebrides.  I sat down beside her to say Hello.  Wasn't that the biggest and best surprise ever!  Thank you so much, Lady Helen!

Grannymac has already told you how hard it was to find a name for me, but it wasn't difficult at all to think of a name for my new little friend.  It could only be Bella, because that means 'beautiful' and she is really, really beautiful!  Don't you think so?  It's going to be wonderful to have her here to share our adventures.  Now I'm more excited than ever!

Today we are going to spend the whole day on Skye, then tomorrow we will be going by ferry on the last part of our long journey to the Outer Hebrides.  I don't know what a ferry is, but I'll find out tomorrow.  Grannymac thought it would be a good idea to look at a map to see where we are and where we are going.

We live right down in the south of Scotland, very close to the border with England, in the bottom left-hand corner of the border line in the small inserted map.  You can see that we have come a very long way already and tomorrow we are going to the white island on the map, out in the sea above and to the left of Skye.  Today we are going to go north from Uig (pronounced Ooig) where we have stayed overnight and where the ferries sail from, right round where it says Trotternish (funny name!) on the map, and then down to Portree, the main town on Skye, and then back to Uig.

I was able to stand on the dashboard again but Bella had to sit beside me as her feet are too ..., well, let's say, not the right shape for the slots I stand in, but that was fine.  The first interesting stop was to have a look at some of the kind of houses people here used to live in a long time ago, very different from today's houses.  I'm not sure if I would have liked living there, although maybe it would be very cosy.

 After that, we drove through beautiful landscapes, heading for a beach where there were dinosaur footprints that could be seen at the right state of the tide.  Dinosaurs?  In Scotland?  Well, well!

It is interesting to see how spread the houses are, not close together as they are in a town. As we were coming close to the beach, it became obvious that Bella was going to keep falling over - poor Bella!  We will have to do something about that.

You can just see the dinosaur sign on the left.  We spent a little bit of time on the beach, but, even though we looked, we didn't find the footprints.

You will notice some very strange-looking words, which are difficult to pronouce and to understand, if you don't speak Gaelic.  This is the language that about a third of the people on Skye speak,  as well as English.  We don't speak Gaelic so it is just as well there is an English version of the text too.  There were some very unusual little shelters that must be to shelter the boats in stormy weather, perhaps even to prevent them being washed away.   Whoever built them didn't have to look far for big stones - they were lying everywhere at the bottom of the small cliffs.  There was also a little stone building built in the same way.

 

When we moved on, we solved Bella's problem by putting her in front of my arm in the hope that this would stop her from falling over.  I hope it does as I didn't like to see her falling.

Another house a long way from the nearest neighbours.  You will notice that the road is narrow, with passing places for vehicles to pass each other.  Our next stop was the viewing point for two tourist favourites -  Mealt Falls and Kilt Rock.  And just look at that sign!  I'm glad we didn't go anywhere near the edge!

Just imagine people climbing on that rock!

After stopping here we were on our way to Portree, passing through more beautiful scenery.  It is a pity the weather wasn't a bit better.  We passed a rock called the Old Man of Storr and also passed close by one of the many, many sheep we were going to see this week.

Grannymac has been to Skye and Portree several times before, but she is always pleased to be back again.  Portree is a small town with a population of about 2300.  It has the only secondary school on the island.  This time we concentrated on the harbour area,as harbours are always interesting and this area of Portree is particularly colourful.  Here are a few of the photographs Grannymac took, including a couple of some hopeful gulls looking for an easy bite or two from the people eating their fish and chips!

After some very necessary (and some not-so-necessay!) shopping, we headed back to Uig.

Lady Helen and Grannymac had a quick look at the small Uig Pottery shop, where Grannymac bought a small dish and a vase.  Nothing exciting for the rest of the day - just getting ready for tomorrow's journey by ferry to the Outer Hebrides.  I wonder what a ferry will be like?