Day 9 : From Skye to Loch Ness

On a lot of these roads, there is no speed limit. It seems like people take that to mean, drive as fast as you can. Nobody seems to mind that there are no lines on the road, or the road is made of dirt, or you can barely fit one car on the road. There are plenty of signs saying “Blind Turns”, or “Slow”, or Aaron’s favorite “Oncoming vehicles in middle of road.” There might as well just be a bunch of signs saying “Fingers Crossed”.

Well after another butt clenching drive, we made it to the Fairy Pools of Skye Island. It was probably our favorite hike so far. It had crystal clear ponds and waterfalls, and tons of rocks to climb on. There were plenty of people swimming in the pools, unfortunately, we didn’t have our swimsuits handy. But we climbed around. We took it all in. Eventually, we made our way out.

On the way to our next stop was yet another castle. Eilean Donan Castle was a castle from the 13th century that had been destroyed, then rebuilt in the 1930’s as a family’s summer home. It cost $250,000 to restore the castle in the 30’s which is about $250 million in today’s money. Seems a bit much. It’s hard to make a castle historically accurate and useful as a family home, but they did a good job as far as we could tell. The most interesting thing in the castle was a several hundred year old lock of Bonnie Prince Charles’ hair. The guy was super blonde.

Loch Ness was up next on our trip. It’s not necessarily a bucket list item, but we’re glad to say we’ve been. There’s a castle next to the lake called Castle Urquhart. It’s in ruins, which makes it much more fun to explore. We watched a nice film about the history of the castle, then wandered around for a while, all while keeping an eye out for ol’ Nessie. We didn’t see the monster, but we did get to skip rocks over the lake below the castle and Aaron got a nice picture of what looks to be a log.

By the time we got to our next stop, Inverness, we were beat. This was our first hotel that had room service, so we took advantage. We ended the night with Burgers and Pasta and Netflix.

There was some more driving to be done the next day.

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