Third and last day of exploring treasures of the Scottish northwest.
Morning view from our room.
Waking up well-rested, we started the last day on Skye with a stroll across Portee...
.. but we hit the road pretty soon, as we had quite a few things on our to-do list. The road itself was actually one of them. Driving straight north on the Trotternish peninsula, our first stop came to sight in no time.
The Storr. Oh yes.
As the enchanting contour of the famous landmark showed up on the horizon, I was thrilled to see it up closer. However, when we approached the tourists' parking lot packed with a million cars and several buses, I changed my mind and wanted to skip it. Thankfully, my friend convinced me to stop anyway, and I am glad she did. As it turned out, all the other people just climbed on the nearest hill from the parking lot to take a selfie and went away.
Kidding you not, after hiking just some 500m (~1600ft) there was literally nobody around. Well, good.
As we started climbing towards the most prominent rock formation, the Old Man of Storr, it was nice and sunny.
..But by the time we reached it, the sun hid behind clouds. Still, what a place!
No people = no scale. this thing is huge.
The genius loci was beyond a measurement, so the time became an irrelevant element.
Yet, eventually we moved on.
...to see a collection of Skye's waterfalls:
Lealt Falls
Mealt Falls
Then, we interrupted the waterfall run to stop by The Quiraing - a landslip forming yet another astonishing landscape feature.
To get there, we drove up a neat singletrack road..
yeah...
seriously, driving in Scotland can be the joy of joys
It took us all the way to the west side of the island, to the town of Uig.
Uig Bay with a ferry getting ready to depart to the Outer Hebrides
From Uig, we drove to continue our waterfalls adventure. The next on the list were the Fairy Pools.
A good sized storm run into us, but as we hiked towards the pools the rain went away. For a moment, we had the place enlighten in an attractive fashion.
Because of some minerals in the river, its water is colored in saturated cyan.
As quickly as the rain disappeared, it came back.
..But as there were still some holes in the clouds; well, it was worthy to get wet.
We returned to our car by a late afternoon, which was; again, marked with nice light all over.
Did I mention about how good is it to drive here..? ok, ok.
In a bit, we were near the last falls on our list.
Waterfalls at Allt Coire nam Bruadaram
At this time, another rain was coming our way, making a neat, fast changing show on the sky. You could just sit down and stare at the mountains - the scenery would change several times per minute. This was a pattern that followed us even after we left the island.
Better than any TV show, let me tell you.
Shortly, the day was coming to an end. But before the daylight was completely gone, we took last walk to say bye to the Highlands.
Until the next time...
Thanks for reading.
volokhonsky
May 5, 2017 at 06:38
I think that is a perfect itinerary for a first road trip in Scotland when you start heading toward Skye, toward the isles and even higher in the Highlands, it becomes difficult to do a lot of road since the roads are single track! You guys were so lucky some gorgeous weather ??
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