Island of Skye

The island of skye is located off the northwestern shore of Scotland, and takes just a half day to tour by car. We drove around the eastern half, which provided us with plenty of stunning sea views. The island is home to a large portion of Scotland's Gaelic speaking population, and I read that some other traditional languages were or still are spoken. Scots has been recently decreed a separate language, but is considered by many to be a dialect of English. The Viking language of Norn is no longer spoken, but some words were adopted regionally. Overall, there is a strong sense of independence and pride among all the northern islands. The Island of Skye is reached three ways, by bridge via car (what we did), by ferry, or by the Hogwart's Express. Not kidding, the West Highland Railroad was made famous by the Harry Potter films, which show the dramatic rail bridge to the Island of Skye.

We drove a scenic loop that led between two mountain ranges, the Red and Black Cuillins. I don't know if you will be able to appreciate the colors over the internet, but you can see that the scree on top of each range is red or black. The views were incredible, since the road switches back fairly high into the mountains. It was a white knuckle journey for me, what with people constantly passing in the middle of the road and pulling over for pictures, but fortunately Scott is very good with mountain roads.

We also saw some rock formations and a few local castles, which were mostly ruins except for the one above, which was featured in the movie "Made of Honor."

About halfway around the eastern penninsula, the coastal road downgrades to a one lane driveway with occasional areas for passing. This was very nervewracking for me because no one slows down. Cars drive straight at each other until someone suddenly pulls into a small passing culdesac at the last second. And for some unkown reason, tour buses thought that this was a great place to drive; I have no idea how they made it around some of the turns. Maybe they called for help at this phone booth, located exactly 100 miles from civilization in any direction.

After 3 hours of sightseeing, we got some excellent local beer and fish and chips. The next time any of you travel, promise me you'll try the local beers. We almost always are pleasantly surprised by how unique they are. We also spent some time shopping at local craft and art stores. The island of Skye was a nice county day trip, and the next morning we moved on to Stirling. - Anna