The Isle of Skye. It just sounds magical, doesn’t it?

It is.

I again did the driving but no matter, the scenery was all around us and hard to miss. We did a big circle around the whole isle, which rises above the sea and affords magnificent views of the sea, the Scottish Highlands in the distance and islands on either side.

How do I know it has such magnificent views? I know this because somehow, someway, we have been fortunate to have TWO days of almost cloudless skies. This was the two days we really needed that kind of weather for or we would have been experiencing the misty, rainy, mucky side of Scotland. Not today. Blue skies, even bluer water, green hills/mountains, fresh wind from the sea. The topography is similar to that which we’ve seen elsewhere, volcanic origins, glens scoured by glaciers and water, mountains of every shape – conical, flatiron, gradual slopes (I have no clue whether those are actual terms. I’m just a traveler on this planet). Even then in Dunvegan it looked like we were in the southwest of USA with huge mesas – except they were covered in green. Magical indeed. We stopped as often as we could to just take it all in and try to figure out how we went from being kids getting married 40 years ago this month to standing here on the top of the world in Scotland. Everyone should be so lucky and blessed, depending on your viewpoint.

We did a little bit of hiking along the way but because I carried my trekking poles halfway across the world, I decided I might as well leave them at our lodging. We got by but I would have like to have done more, but I know my body. After awhile my back needs those poles!

The roads. Ah, the roads. The Isle has mostly what are called “single track” roads. It means cars cannot pass each other, but there are numerous pullouts along the way on either side of the road. So it’s a game of chicken to see who gets to their pullout first and has to wait for the oncoming car to pass. I was terrified of them because I really didn’t fully understand the concept, but it turns out everyone drives pretty slowly on them. Only once did I screw up, forget I was in Scotland and pulled into the one on the RIGHT side of the road (I’m supposed to be on the left, even on a single track) and pointed to the oncoming guy to pass me on the left, like HE was the idiot. I had to tell our innkeeper this because last night he led us out to the grocery store on a single track and he mentioned it to me and they really got a kick out of it. Anyway I’m getting the hang of driving here and really rather enjoy it. Good for the aging brain to change it up a bit.

I think I’ve been failing to mention sheep everywhere. All of them luscious and ready for someone to shear them and make yarn for me to buy! Every ewe has a couple of little black faced lambs with her and the rams have lovely faces and curly horns. When you are standing on a hillside they are all below and you can hear the baa-ing. More magic. We saw a hilarious scene of a couple of lambs race over to mom – literally it looked like they were saying “I’ll race you to mom!” The first one slammed into mom (enough that she had to stabilize herself )and got to the teat before the other one was halfway there. I bet they were rams-in-training.

Once we came back around we drove out to Dunvegan Castle and Gardens only to find out that we had once again been fooled by the late Scotland sun. It was 6 p.m. and it was closed. No problem, the little town has an ice cream shop so all was well. Al drove back from there. He will not again. It’s ridiculous to have another one of us have to go through the learning curve while another one sits through terror in the passenger seat. I was buzzing along the roads today, I got this….

Tomorrow to Inverness and the north end of Loch Ness. Will get some nice photos for you. We are being pretty serious about staying in the moment and keeping our picture snapping to a minimum and even then mostly having a person in it. I DO think I will have have to buy a Scotland picture book, tho.