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08/02/06 - Portree, Isle of Skye, Scotland (photo album for first 2 weeks in Scotland) A full day of site-seeing, scotch tasting, Gaelic music and tyre repair |
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Skye is a solitary-seeming place, with lots of scenic, winding
roads and stop-offs to view in wonderment the majestic green,
rocky hills, cliffs, pounding waterfalls, crystalline bodies of
water...and tourists from all over the world! It's easy to
imagine Skye being a quiet sort of place outside the busy
tourist season, which is of course, right now. Hence, many
of the roads on the island are a just single lane, but intended
for two-way traffic, built with periodic bulges in them called
'passing places'. Courteous drivers who are familiar with
this sort of road keep an eye out for oncoming traffic and
whichever car is closest to a 'passing place' will stop and wait
there for traffic to pass. Unfortunately, at this time of
year there are many tourists (and locals who are sick of tourist
traffic, I imagine) on the road who are neither courteous nor
familiar with the system. As we were happily driving along
one of these single-track roads enjoying the scenery, a car
approached us. They were driving quite fast, flying by
their passing place, and we had long since passed ours up.
They never slowed down and forced us off the road onto the rocky
dirt shoulder (if it qualifies as that). We heard a noise
and pulled over at the next opportunity to have a look but
nothing appeared amiss. So we continued on to enjoy our
day, visiting the rather worthless Skye Museum of Island Life (a
sort of recreated crofters' [farmers'] village), although the
thatched roof cottages were rather quaint, and the slightly
more interesting Talisker Distillery, where we took a tour and
sampled their whisky - strong enough to put hair on one's chest,
to be sure! Later in the afternoon, we were still driving around and on our way to see Dunvegan Castle, owned for centuries by the Clan MacLeod and still occupied by the current clan chief and savvy marketer, John MacLeod, and then to the popular Skyeskyns (what a clever name!) sheepskin tannery and store. Suddenly, Scott felt the car pulling sharply to the left and pulled off the road into the convenient parking area to find that we had a flat tire, surely the work of the earlier speed demon mishap. After a quick change to the spare in between rain showers, we decided to skip the castle and tannery to make it back to Portree with plenty of time to spare before our evening activity, a Ceilidh (kay-lih) at the local community center. Ceilidhs are gatherings of traditional Gaelic music and storytelling. Going in with low expectations of a touristy night of kilt-wearing Scottish profiteers, we were pleasantly surprised by the show. It turned out to be as least as much for the locals as for visitors, with extremely talented young musicians playing their part in continuing their cultural traditions. No pretense and nothing artificial about it, the evening was a real treat. This morning, after a quick stop at the auto repair shop for a new tire (damaged sidewall - couldn't repair the old tire...uh, I mean tyre) and a long goodbye to our kindly hosts, we plan to head north (way north) to Durness for the night. |
Caroline enjoys the view while Scott changes the tire
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