We drove up to the Scottish border on Thursday night so we could spend all day Friday in Scotland. And in the morning we made for the highlands. There is really only one road that leads to the highlands, so we passed some of the same places we saw on our last trip, including Loch Lomond! We drove through Glencoe, which was crazy beautiful even in the rain, stopping occasionally to take it all in.

We also stopped at a couple of castles. I cannot remember the name of the one above, but the photo below is of Eilean Donan, which I highly recommend.  It is probably one of the most famous, if not the most famous castle in Scotland, so it was fairly crowded. But definitely worth going inside.

After a stormy night in a camping pod on Friday, we finally made it to Skye on Saturday morning. Our first stop: the Fairy Pools. The weather was absolutely terrible, but we weren’t going to let that stop us.

The fog was so thick, we couldn’t even see the mountains in the distance until we were almost upon them. And after trekking all the way along the path to the pools, we agreed they are really more like fairy falls than fairy pools.

That night, we ended up staying in a B&B outside of Portree because the weather wouldn’t allow us to camp. It worked out well, though, because the host had excellent recommendations for our evening plans. We went to the Granary for dinner and then popped over to the pub across the road for some live music.

Our final day on Skye was filled with quick bursts of rain interspersed with periods of sunshine, which somehow coincided perfectly with our driving plans. Our first destination of the day was the Fairy Glen, which I don’t really know how to describe. It was a really interesting place that felt kind of like Dr. Seuss meets Lord of the Rings, with tons of little hills and rocks to climb on.

Next, we visited the Old Man of Storr and this was not an easy hike. You can of course see it from the road, but sometimes I think the view is better when you have to work for it.

 

One place I could have spent the whole day exploring was the Quiraing. We barely walked away from the car here, but there was so much more we could have done. It truly looked like a scene out of Lord of the Rings.

But my favorite place we went on Skye was Talisker Bay, where there is a waterfall that flows right into the ocean. We arrived when the sun was low in the sky and had the beach completely to ourselves.

We sat on the beach while the sun was setting and it felt so nice and warm after all the rain the past couple of days. I definitely did not want to leave, but I knew we needed to find somewhere to sleep for the night. So we drove around looking for an open campsite, starting to get nervous that we’d have to put up the tent in the dark. Finally, we came across the Sligachan campsite in the center of the island.

In the morning, we woke up to a beautiful sunrise and this view! The camera died right as I went to take a picture of it, but luckily George caught this one on his phone before we got on the road to start making our way home.