en route to Fort William

Skye is just so beautiful that I had to post my last few pictures of it.There is no shortage of peat.
Bye Skye!
En route to Fort William we passed by several lochs. This was Loch Loyne.
The name of this loch, I kid you not, is Loch Lochy. That is one lochy loch!
From our hotel room in Fort William we had a view of Loch Linnhe.

Skye day two

The next day was rather rainy. Ah, Scotland. We went for a drive along the west coast of the island; the route there featured miles of one-lane roads with little 'passing places' for you to get around the other cars. This was not B's favorite driving experience.Plus, the roads are full of sheep. Baaa!We stopped to look at an ancient broch, Dun Beag.
Here is what Dun Beag looks like now.
And since there was no other rainy day thing to do there, we toured another distillery, Talisker. The second time around I think I actually began to grasp the distilling process. Talisker whisky was pretty good, too.

Skye

In Skye we stayed in the town of Portree, at the Ben Tianavaig B and B, a place we stumbled into which turned out to be some Lonely Planet recommendation. Even when I try to get away from that book, it comes back and haunts me. This was the view from our room.All the signs in Skye are in Gaelic and English.
Here is Portree town, which was the largest town on Skye, but still not very large. It did have a good pub, the Isles Inn, which we went to one night to hear some live Celtic music, which was great. The pub also had a fireplace, a roaring fire being appropriate for Scotland even in July.
We went for a hike up to the 'Old Man of Storr,' which is the pointy rock formation in the middle of this photo, that looks kind of like a tree.
Here was the view along the path.
It was a bit muddy.Watch out! Sheep in the road!
There were acres upon acres of peat, which people were harvesting.

On the road to the Isle of Skye

We saw some beautiful scenery on the road to Skye. First we dove by Eilean Donan castle, so we stopped to look around. B said it had been in the movie Highlander, which I never saw.The castle had been fixed up and restored so people (and films) can rent it out for events.

This is Loch Duich, I believe.This is Loch Alch.

Loch Ness to Loch Claunie

We then cruised by Loch Ness, where we saw no evidence of the monster. It must have been hiding. The water was very dark and apparently Loch Ness is very deep, so the monster has plenty of places to hide!

Rain threatened. No surprise there. This is summer?There were plenty of fiberglass monsters on the roadside, photo ready.
Nessie attacks B.
Look out! Another Nessie!
We pressed west towards the Isle of Skye; en route stopping at Urquhart castle, which was extremely crowded and touristy. The crowds wore on my patience a bit.We drove by Loch Claunie as the clouds rolled in. We stopped for the night at this place. What a long day of driving it was. But the views were gorgeous.

Scotland continued

The next day was our long driving day. Have I mentioned that we rented a car for a week? It turned out to be cheaper vis-a-vis the insurance to have only 1 person do the driving, so B drove all week long on the wrong side of the road. The first hour getting out of Edinburgh was the most stressful. I thought he was going to have an anxiety attack, or perhaps give me one. After that it wasn't so bad, although every now and then we had to dodge the other tourists on the road who would forget which way to look or were creeping over to the right side.

The Scots appear to be fond of road signs in general. They have put signs up, when you pull out of any tourist spot, which say, "Drive on the left. Conduisez a gauche." etc, etc in several other languages as well; they are no fools. There are also other signs telling you to drive a safe speed, don't follow too close, gas up, "Tiredness can kill," yadda yadda. After a week it all seemed a little tiresome. I'm used to France where people aren't bossy.

We missed the turn on the highway out of Pitlochry and ended up driving through Inverness. But the countryside was gorgeous, and even though it was our longest driving day, we saw such beautiful scenery!

Lots of peat, everywhere.

So much for that

It too cloudy this morning to see the solar eclipse. Grrrr.