5 - 7 July: Isle of Skye and Inverness

Friday 5 July was the last day of term for the boys. As soon as they were out of school, we set off for Isle of Skye.

Isle of Skye

The drive to Isle of Skye was estimated to 4,5 hours without breaks, so we knew we would have to stop for dinner on the way and therefore arrive rather late. To avoid having to spend a lot of time looking for a hotel room when we arrived, I had pre-booked two rooms at Kings Arms Hotel in Kyleakin, the first village after we crossed the bridge to Isle of Skye.

Booking a hotel room was something I did only a few days in advance of our stay and Kings Arms was the only hotel I could find available online. The reviews were not great, so I was not expecting much.

When we arrived at the hotel, there was a strange smell in the reception area and the hotel was very run-down, but this was what we had to settle for that first night.

Our rooms turned out to be even more run-down than expected. In our room the paint had started to crack and in the boys' room, the plaster had started falling off the wall. Quite fascinating - you don't see hotels in such desperate need for repairs very often (and thank goodness for that!).

To be fair: The beds were comfortable and we all slept well.

Heavy rains and no view

Less than half an hour after we left our hotel Saturday morning, it started to rain. I expected the rain to pass fairly quickly, like we're used to in Scotland, but it rained rather heavily all day, hiding all nature attractions in the thick fog. We'd been told the landscape was quite spectacular, so it was rather disappointing not being able to see it, but what can you do?

Talisker Distillery

After six months in Scotland we had not yet been to a distillery, so our first stop for the day was the Talisker Distillery at Carbost.

Our original plan was to join a guided tour of the distillery, but with all the rain a lot of other tourists had decided they wanted to do the same. This meant we would have to wait for more than an hour in the small showroom/shop, and that wasn't really an option, at least not for the boys and me.

We settled for reading about the distillery and the process, followed by a quick browse in the distillery shop. The boys and I then went outside, giving my husband some extra time in the shop. He came out with whisky glasses and 9 different types of Tallisker whisky.

Dunvegan Castle

From Talisker Distillery we continued north to Dunvegan Castle, catching glimpses of stunning scenery through the heavy rain and fog. After a quick lunch we ran through the pouring rain to get inside the warm and dry castle.

An old castle with connections to Norway

Dunvegan Castle was built for defense purposes around 1266 and stands on a high basalt rock overlooking the loch (Scottish for 'lake'). The castle had a stone curtain wall around the top of the rock on which it stood. The rock was originally surrounded by the sea at high tide and up until 1748, the only entrance to the castle was through a sea gate, which still stands.

Dunvegan is the oldest continuously inhabited castle in Scotland and has been the ancestral home of the Chiefs of Clan MacLeod for 800 years. As a Norwegian I was fascinated by the Norwegian names (Norman and Tormod) in the family tree on display in one of the smaller castle rooms. I later learned that the MacLeod clan's ancestry can be traced back to the Norwegian king Harald Hardråde, or Harald Hardrada as he was called in English, hence the Norwegian names.

Life for the privileged, and for the less privileged

Dunvegan Castle was first opened to the public for charitable purposes two days a week in 1933. Despite a great increase in the number of visitors, the castle still maintains its atmosphere of a family home.
The family memorabilia (including the famous Fairy Flag), the family tree, Jacobite relics and other items on display gave us an insight into the life of the Clan MacLeod. However, what I found the most interesting in the castle were the photographs outside the Old Kitchen and the Pit Dungeon.

The photographs date from 1880 and show ordinary people going about their business, which is something I haven't seen in any of the other castles we've visited.

Among the photographs was one of a local parliament (if I remember correctly), showing the most prominent men in the community. What struck me was that all the men had very worn clothes and even though it obviously was cold (they all had a lot of clothes on), almost half the men were barefoot. I can't imagine how painful that must have been, going through winter without shoes. I've previously read about this in stories about life in the old days in Norway too, but it still makes an even stronger impression when you see it in a photo.

Homely castle, or maybe not?

Just a small story about the Pit Dungeon before we leave the castle: The Pit Dungeon was 13ft deep and embedded in the rock. Prisoners were cast into this space and left to die.

According to one of the guides I talked to, it is claimed that one of the MacLeod chiefs (chief number 20 something I think), threw his first wife into the pit and left her there to die. He later married another woman. How scary that must have been for her - she must have heard the rumors at some point I assume?

Diverse and beautiful gardens

Despite the rain we still wanted to see the gardens before we left the castle. I'm glad we took the time to go for that walk, the gardens turned out to be a hidden oasis. 

The first garden we entered was the water garden with its ornate bridges, shimmering pools fed by small waterfalls, streams flowing down to the sea, and a rich and colourful plant variety. The garden seemed to be bursting with life and despite the rain we could appreciate the beauty of this lush and rather unique garden.

The other gardens were more like other gardens we've seen, though very beautiful in their own right too. We strolled through the elegant surroundings of the formal round garden, followed by the walled garden, formerly the castle's vegetable garden.

The walled garden now features a diverse range of plants and flowers, though it was the water lily pond that really caught my attention. The pink water lillies were extremely beautiful and added an extra element of serenity to the garden.

Picturesque Portree

After our visit to Dunvegan Castle, we headed south to Portree, the main town on Skye. We browsed quickly through the small and charming shops, before looking for a place to have dinner.

By now we were rather hungry and low blood sugar levels did not allow us to spend a lot of time looking for a place to eat. We ended up with a very unmemorable meal, which often happens when you just rush into one of the first restaurants you find.

Before leaving Portree we had to take a look at the colourful harbour, and that's when we found the good seafood restaurants...

A memorable night - for the wrong reasons

From Portree we drove to Dunollie Hotel in Broadford, which I had pre-booked before our journey. This hotel was not as run-down as the Kings Arms Hotel and the breakfast was better too, which was a relief as the reviews for this hotel were worse than for the former.

When we checked in, the hotel staff insisted that there should be one adult per double room, i.e. that the boys should not be left alone in one room. We solved this by installing the boys in one room and then, when we went to bed our oldest soon and I swapped beds, leaving one adult and one child per room at night.

I was very glad we had made this arrangement when, in the middle of the night, we were woken by one of the most dreadful sounds I've ever heard. It almost made my heart stop. At this stage (around 3 am) I was close to coma and I could not understand what the noise was. After a little while I popped my head out in the hall and after seeing other guests in their pyjamas I realised that the noise was the fire alarm and we had to get out.

Our youngest son was still asleep and only woke when I told him we had to get out because of a fire alarm. We both stumbled out of our hotel room in a daze, wearing only our pyjamas and no jacket or shoes. When we got to the room my husband and oldest son were sharing, I was starting to recover from the shock and realised we needed to put on some more clothes before going outside.

As I started to head back towards our room for some more clothes, people started coming back into the hotel again - it had been a false alarm. The next morning we received a letter of apologies from the hotel management for the false alarm. I was glad it was only a false alarm, I sure wasn't impressed with the way I had handled the situation.

Fantastic nature and great views

Sunday morning it had stopped raining and the sun was shining. Even though we'd driven around the whole island on Saturday, we decided to drive around the island again to enjoy its magnificent nature. This time we drove up the east coast, all the way to the top.

On our way up the coast we stopped several times to take photos of dramatic nature attractions, including the Old Man of Storr, a 50m-high pinnacle of crumbling basalt. This seemingly unclimbable pinnacle was first scaled in 1955 by English mountaineer Don Whillans, a feat that has been repeated only a handful of times since.

Another fascinating sight was the Kilt Rock, a sea cliff  on the east coast which resembles a kilt. The rock has vertical basalt columns to form the pleats and intruded sills of dolerite forming the pattern. It was very picturesque and to us foreigners it seemed so right now that we were touring Scotland.
 
Going back down we drove on narrow and picturesque roads through Uig and then past Portree before heading for the mainland. With a long drive ahead we didn't take the time to go past Dunvegan and Carbost once more, but we still felt we managed to get the best of Skye.