After four hours in Dublin (100% tourist here, taking enough time to drink a pint of Guinness at the airport), we flew into Inverness where Anthony quickly got thrown into driving on the left side of the road for the first time. I’m not going to lie. I didn’t think this was going to be much of a “thing”…. But the first time I saw a car coming at us on the right side of the road, I freaked out a wee bit. And going left on roundabouts was unnerving as well. But then we made our way toward Torridon and all of a sudden, we were on single-track roads with tiny little “passing points” for when cars were coming toward us. We didn’t know what the hell to do the first time this happened, but after one very confused backing-up-toward-the-wrong-side-of-the-passing-point episode, we got the hang of it. We stopped in at The Torridon for a quick walk.
Afterward, we continued just a bit further before settling in Shieldaig for the night which was so peaceful and beautiful. We had a lovely dinner at the restaurant in town which was setting up for music that night. We hadn’t slept the night before, so we went on a fairly short walk around the peninsula, and then tucked in early to catch up on sleep.
The next morning, our host made us a delicious breakfast, and we went on our way, driving along the coast toward tiny Applecross.
We came across a little beach and decided to walk around a bit.
At Applecross, we turned off to drive the Bealach Na Ba, a famous, and very dangerous, drive. It’s all single-track again, with just small passing points interspersed, and it curves along down the mountains. It was pretty cloudy for most of the drive, but the dramatic scenery made up for it.
We headed toward Plockton afterward, which was a really pretty village on the coast. I was feeling a bit queasy after all that winding driving, so I gulped in some fresh air, while enjoying the views and then we grabbed some lunch at the Plockton Inn.
Afterward, we drove about 20 more minutes to Eilean Donan Castle. This castle is built on a little island in the water and is absolutely spectacular to see, and I wish we could make it back at sunrise or sunset, but even on a cloudy afternoon like today, I was impressed.
We only made one more stop, to get groceries, before we made our way across the bridge at Kyle of Lochalsh to the Isle of Skye. We drove up to Waternish, where our little bothy on the sea is.
We don’t have any wifi at the bothy, so we decided to walk to the closest pub, which is about a 20 minute walk along the beach. Unfortunately that beach is all smooth rocks, which is actually a really hard surface to walk on. To be honest, I don’t know how we managed to get there and back without at least one of our clumsy asses breaking an ankle. But alas, we made it. To find out they had no wifi. The bartender, upon hearing our plea for wifi, told us “Ah no, guess you’ll just have to talk to each other.” Touche, my friend. So we grabbed a pint and did just that before stumbling on back to our bothy for the evening. And now, here I sit, at a café on the Isle of Skye so that I can post this blog and check in with civilization.
