It seems to be that out on Skye, the weather is best in the mornings. And as much as we wanted to stay in this beautiful cabin to watch the sun rise over the mountains (we have already wondered about coming back here in summer on the motorbikes) it was time to go. So last night, after failing to get some car light trail photos, we packed up the majority of our stuff so we could be up and out early.
It was still past 10 before we actually started walking up the hill. This is our hobby after all .. recreationally walking up hills to take a photo and then walk back down. There isn’t to much to say about it other than today we are doing it at the Old Man of Storr.
It’s a huge free standing pinnacle of rock that’s persisted where all the rock around it has failed over the millennia. It stands overlooking Loch Leathan and then the sea with the isle of Raasay and finally Applecross on mainland Scotland. It’s a wonderful view out across all of this rugged coast land.
We had great weather walking up and just as we arrived at the top, it changed to low cloud and spitting rain. If we had been there just 30 mins earlier! Still, a nice chap took our family photo with as good weather as we could hope for before we started walking back down.
Daito had been running around all over the place and had worn himself out a bit by now. I couldn’t have done this during the summer as I imagine it gets ridiculously busy up here, but now on the way down he was a lot calmer. This was a good job too as the final traversing path up to the viewpoint was coated in ice! The rest of the way had been fine but this last section was high enough and hidden from the sun by the old man and the cliffs that it hadn’t thawed.
The walk down was tricky with him because he just wants to run and explore. But I can’t let him bomb off down the hill because very soon he will reach the end of the lead and then I’ll get dragged faster than my old man legs will carry me! My knee is still bad on the way down hills. We should have brought our walking poles but forgot them in the van. This helps but I’m just always going to have knee pain. I’m not stopping hill walking when there are views like this to be experienced.
Back at the van, a hot cup of tea and some camper sandwiches later and we were on the road. Leaving Skye behind, we are off to Kingussie the northerly route as it was only a few mins slower. This meant we could also bounce off Inverness to get some more food for the last few days in Scotland. I’m sure no one minded us leaving the carpark the wrong way down a one way street. I blame Google maps.
We finally rocked up at the new holiday house and again we were pleasantly surprised at how clean it was presented. All of the places we have stayed have actually been “me” clean and not just “that’ll do” clean. We have been impressed. Or maybe our terrible experience in Wales a year or two ago just traumatised us so badly we are just anticipating something that awful again?
After a lamb steak dinner with mash and greens, Aimi watched something on tv about fat Greeks getting married while I played with the marble run. I have no shame admitting I had a great time making tracks and noisily testing them over and over.
