Isle Of Skye, Scotland

I had a feeling last night that this guy in the common room was someone I knew, but couldn’t figure out who he was. When I woke up this morning, I realized it was Jason Pittman (Joanne & Grant’s cousin). I saw him this morning and had a great chat. He is on the three-day Haggis tour.

Today we are doing Nickstour, a bus trip around the Isle of Skye. We left at 10.30 am with our driver, Steve. There were 14 of us, most being from the trip in yesterday.

Our first stop was at Portree, a small seaside village. We had half an hour to walk around and have lunch, which I did with Ken from San Francisco.

After that we stopped at the Old Man of Storr. This is a rock formation on a hill that took us around 40 minutes to get up to. The view at the top was magnificent, looking back over Storr Loch and Raasy, the island to the east.

Old Man of Storr, Isle of Skye, Scotland

Looking Towards Storr Loch, Isle of Skye, Scotland

We were all relieved to get to the bottom and relax in the bus for the next drive up to Kilt Rock. This is a cliff face on the east coast, that is said to look like a Scotsman’s kilt, though I couldn’t see the resemblance. There was also a waterfall here – Mealt Falls – which had a huge drop to the seaside below. Not far from here we saw another couple of waterfalls as well as some old salmon smoking factories, which were at the bottom of the cliff, and looked completely inaccessible.

Time for another climb. We reached another hill, The Quiraing, and climbed to its 600-meter peak. Once again, the view was so beautiful. I wish I could just bring the tent up here and camp and take in the view 24 hours a day. Also, while I was up at the top, I ran into Matt from the Contiki trip (small world is an understatement). He’s also staying in Kyleakin, doing a three-day Haggis – so I will catch up with him later tonight.

Our next stop was The Fairy Glen. This is an area in the north of Skye which is littered with miniature mountains. These were formed by giant glacial deposits, but the better legend has the King of Ireland marrying a fairy and moving to the area. The Irishman felt overwhelmed by the vast area, with its huge mountains, so his wife made all these smaller hills to make him feel more at home.

After climbing a couple of these hills, we headed for home via Uig and Portree. We stopped at a pub on the way home for a drink, before getting back to the hostel at 6.30 pm.

When I read back what I had just written, it doesn’t go near doing it justice. What we saw in eight hours and the ground we covered was like nothing else. And once again we were blessed with incredible weather. Not long after getting back to the hostel, we headed out to Saucy Mary’s – the local pub – for a big night. Liverpool and Manchester United were on the telly, and some card games in a pub full of backpackers, who knew each other for the most part, made for a quality night out. We came home at closing time and watched telly and chatted until three am.