Overwhelmed by Scotland's beauty: Day 2

Day 2: Isle of Skye and (some of) the West Coast

The Lochailort Inn puts on a mean breakfast spread. I'm talking eggs and toast and fresh butter and fruit and smoked salmon and all kinds of delicious things. And to think, we might have missed it if we'd been on that first ferry of the morning!

We got a pretty early start and headed towards Skye. Anj's only request for the trip, besides a side excursion to a race track that is not, in fact, in Scotland (and we obviously didn't do), was a stop in a post office in Portree to visit with Jax, the stamp licking dog. He's a bit of a social media sensation, I gather, because he'll lick your stamps for you to affix to your post cards. Gotta love a working dog. So off we went.

Spoiler alert: Skye is GORGEOUS.

Views like this were around every bend in the road

Goats do whatever they want

Can you imagine living there?!

So we arrive in Portree and it's bustling. Lots of tourists, lots of cool artsy shops, not lots of parking. We scoot around 'til we find some and somehow I lose Anj. "Somehow" meaning I got distracted by a pretty church and walked in and by the time I remember I have a brother, he's gone. So I continue being distracted, only this time by a church bazaar that's going on and selling all kinds of adorable, kitschy things. Including greeting cards which can be mailed home with the assistance of Jax! So I get some goodies (including some rose water butter cookies that mean I can now, for sure, die happy) and go looking for himself.

Harbor in Portree, Isle of Skye

Portree, Isle of Skye

Located Anj, wrote up my cards, and went post office hunting. And look who we found!

Jax, the Post Dog of Portree

Now I understand why he's a social media sensation. He's retired from licking stamps, but he hangs out at the post office every day with his Dad and is very happy to give kisses!

We considered sticking around Portree for lunch, but we had gotten a recommendation for a place from some super sweet folks we met on our flight to Glasgow. They were down in Birmingham for an awards ceremony - the group runs the "tastings tables" at a grocery store up in Glasgow that is, apparently, the best in the country - and they were pleased as punch to laugh at our terrible pronunciations of tiny Scottish towns, ridiculous planned travel mileage, and general sibling shenanigans for the flight. Rosie, the group's matriarch, was my seat companion for the flight and she recommended a place for lunch called Columba 1400. They do really cool outreach for at-risk and "troubled" youth, and she had told me it was just north of Portree. So that was our planned destination. 

Welcome

Moo Moos

Old Man of Storr

Kilt Rock Viewpoint

Kilt Rock (the background basalt columns)

It was a touch blustery

We arrived after much dithering around looking at Kilt Rock and the Mealt Falls (it's in the foreground of the Kilt Rock photo above, but the water was slow that day so the falls kind of blend into the rock face in that image) which was totally worth it. Blustery, splendid dithering.

We ate on the patio outside

Our view for lunch

Needless to say, it was a stupendous spot to eat. I don't even remember the food, frankly, but the view. Man, the view.

We hit the road again and decided that much of our plan for Skye would need to be scuttled. We had to make it to Gairloch by 8 and realized that "3 hours" of drive time would almost certainly NOT be 3 hours with all our pit stops on the way. We decided to cut out the whole western swing of road (we had planned to go out towards the Neist Point Lighthouse on the far west coast) and just loop back down and around to Portree. This might well have been our best decision of the whole trip.

To get back to Portree proper we could either take the same road we took in (uh, why would we do that?) or we could continue northward towards Staffin and go around the furthest northern tip OR we could check out a kind of sketchy road that looked like it went up towards some of those stellar peaks in the photos above and just see what the hell would happen. This was our first experience with the magic of a Connected Road. 

Tip to future Scottish Highland travelers: when offered a Connected Road, take it. Not once were we disappointed by the extraordinary views that these tiny little roads afforded. I don't think they have actual names, but the car GPS called them Connected Roads, and so did we.

A Connected Road from later in the trip (when we really appreciated them)

Connected Road sheep are majestic

Hell of a napping spot, little guy

Views like this happen on Connected Roads

Un. Real.

Uig, the town at the end of our first Connected Road

All good things must come to an end, and so we trundled on with Connected Road living on in our memory. Little did we know that more would come our way with patience to guide us.

I mentioned that Anj's one goal for the trip was to meet Jax, the Portree Post Dog. Mine was to take a photo of some Highland cattle. You know, the ones with the massive horns and shaggy fur and delightful disinterest in humans. So my brother, gem that he is, was committed to helping me photograph all the sheep and cows we passed because we were realizing that the ginormous Highland cattle aren't as widespread (at least where we were traveling), but sheep are everywhere. Every. Where. And cows make appearances along the way. So photographing all the other livestock seemed like a good alternative until the shaggy beasts made an actual appearance.

I sang the Barney theme song to them to make them look at me

Churches everywhere

I would definitely be a sheep in Scotland

A sample view from Skye

We were getting overwhelmed by the views. Seriously overwhelmed. But we had to keep rolling. We were off Skye, had joined up with the NC500 route, but we had to make it to Gairloch if we wanted to have a chance of eating dinner. We were making good time. We were passing through some of the most spectacular vistas we'd ever seen and could hardly take it all in. We were on a steady diet of "Oh my God. This is incredible." We gave in and stopped.

We parked by this bridge and went strolling through the peat. We looked like The Sound of Music, spinning in circles, trying to absorb it all. We trekked up a small hill and views like this awaited us:

Heart stoppingly beautiful. But we had to keep going. So we did. At least til we got up to the top of the hill and saw this:

How do you go on from that? We could either sit there and weep for the beauty of the world (seemed reasonable) or continue. So we tried. But then we crested the hill and saw this:

Two months later and I still feel breathless looking at these photos. We had to keep moving or risk missing dinner and not being able to check into our AirBnB so we went. Kicking and screaming, but comforted by the knowledge that such beauty exists in the world. And that hopefully we'd see more of it. 

As we continued on, we reached a sharp turn in the road. There were many of those, but not every one had HIGHLAND CATTLE AT THE END! Anj, bless him, slammed on the breaks and out I hopped to meet these beauties.

Highland Cattle photos? Check.

We made it to Gairloch by 8:45 which is sort of like 8. Our host was gracious and helped us to find the only store in town that was still open for dinner - a killer fish and chips shop. We ate, admired the view, and I went the hell to bed. Anj went out and got free drinks from, it sounds like, half the pub. So we both got what we wanted!

Gairloch from our seaside AirBnB