Today’s weather was better than forecasted with sunny skies in the morning and a few clouds in the afternoon, so it was a great day for our drive around the Isle of Skye. Here’s our route, starting from our B&B (Rasa Sayang) in Kyle of Lochalish just the mainland side of the Skye Bridge. It took exactly 4 hours for the drive but because we had lots of stops it didn’t seem that long.
The first thing we saw was at Sligachan with its famous bridge.
About 45 minutes later, we arrived at our castle de jour, Dunvegan Castle. It is is the oldest continuously inhabited castle in Scotland and has been the ancestral home of the Chiefs of Clan MacLeod for 800 years.
The castle was first built in the 13th century and, like many others, was added on to piecemeal over the years.
While certainly not small, this castle was one that I could actually picture living in. It had a homey feel and wasn’t over the top in its decorations. The current Chief of the Clan, Hugh MacLeod, lives in apartments on the top floor.
The Ferry Flag hanging in the Drawing Room is one of the Clan’s most prized possessions.
The flag was brought back by a MacLeod from the Holy Land when he returned from the Crusades and is said to have special powers. Here is a link to the story of the Fairy Flag. https://www.scotclans.com/pages/the-fairy-flag-of-dunvegan
The North Room was filled with memorabilia, including another one of the castle’s prized possessions. The Dunvegan Cup is made of wood with silver plates and dates to 1493.
There was also a dungeon. It was small and at least 10 feet underground. No way I want to spend 5 minutes down there.
Once finished in this fascinating castle, we headed out to the gardens. We only visited a couple of the many gardens in the 42,000 acre estate.
After Dunvegan, we headed to the Fairy Glen which is a number of conical hills that look man-made but are the remnants of an ancient landslip. It almost looked like the hills were covered in moss.
Next up was The Quiraing. The road between these two sites was one of those one lane with pull off roads that Peter hates. We only had a couple of problems when cars were coming way to fast and we had to make emergency pull offs. My honey was pretty white knuckled after those but we made it without any major problems.
We only saw one part of the Quiraing as well as this walk was even further than Fairy Glen, 2 hours round trip at a moderate pace. Since our pace is anything but moderate, it would have taken forever. So we took a few pics from the overlook and moved on.
Then it was on to Kilt Rock. Its name comes from the ripple on the rocks that resembles a folded kilt. There was no walking this time, just a short trip from the car park to the overlook.
Our final stop was Old Man of Storr but for this one we didn’t get further than the car park. We had seen it from the distance during the drive, but once we got there we realized there was a steep walk of over an hour to get to the rocks. It should come as no surprise that we didn’t even get out of the car.
Our final stop of the day was Portree, the largest village on the Isle. By this time it was after 3pm and we hadn’t yet had lunch so we were starving. Most of the restaurants had stopped serving lunch but weren’t serving dinner until 5pm but we found one diner that served all day. After a lovely beef burger dinner, we headed back to our B&B for a relaxing evening.
Tomorrow we have our longest drive yet, 4 1/2 hours. But we have several stops to make so hopefully it will go as fast as today’s drive went. As always, thanks for traveling with us on our adventures.