Our travel day from Reykjavik to Glasgow was spent packing, walking, riding, flying, driving and surviving customs and queues, bad GPS and miscellaneous frustrations. It didn’t help anyone’s mood that we woke so early to make the flight.
ICELAND TO SCOTLAND
Getting out of Reykjavik was easy – we loaded up in a shuttle to the main bus terminal in the city, then on a bus for 45 minutes out to Keflavik Airport. Our plane was just late enough to give us a bit of down time for muffins and coffee before boarding. The flight was smooth, but navigating Glasgow was not.
Border control kept us in a line for an hour and a half, and by the time we arrived at baggage claim our bags were the only ones left on the loop. The rental car company hung up on Angela when she called for a shuttle, so we crossed our fingers as we stepped outside to the pick up zone and waited for a bus. Twenty minutes later, we were at the Arnold Clark rental company lot working with a friendly young woman to secure our car. She was really helpful and nice, though her thick brogue challenged us a couple of times.
Our drive from the airport into central Glasgow was frustrating, as the TomTom GPS system couldn’t find our location plus I was driving on the opposite side of the road. Nonetheless, we found it with a minimum of cursing and settled into our room for an hour before heading to dinner at a highly rated gastropub called “The Butterfly and the Pig.” Located in the basement of a block of row houses, the restaurant is famous for an allegedly abstruse menu in which they use colorful colloquialisms to name and describe the food, making even standard items hard to discern. It was a fun read and the food was good.
ESCAPE FROM GLASGOW
We were scheduled to leave the big city (Glasgow being the third largest in the UK), and head into the Highlands. However, getting out was a saga too.
First, we needed power adapters and camera equipment, meaning we had to find stores and parking, no small feat. Our TomTom still couldn’t find our current location – vitally important when you’re trying to get from point A to point B – nor could we figure out how to enter in addresses using Scottish convention. After some wrong turns and a mini-tour of outer Glasgow, we finally found the camera store and made our purchases. Sadly, finding the other store required an additional 45-minute search on foot. At around 12:30p, we finally broke free from Glasgow and were on our way to Oban.
Outside the go-go pace of the city, our drive slowed. The weather was chilly with low dark clouds and stretches of the A85 near Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park were very narrow or even single-lane. It was slow-going and seemed more dangerous in the intermittent rain showers.
KILCHURN CASTLE
We stopped in Tyndrum to grab an old-school paper map and a bite at a nearby pub. Then we were off for Kilchurn Castle, a ruined 15th century fortress on the eastern end of Loch Awe near Argyll and Bute. Access to the castle is notoriously difficult during exceptionally wet times, but other than having to avoid sheep droppings and lots of black slugs, we easily hiked the half-mile trail across a pasture to the entrance. One of the castle’s best features is that it has not been updated or rebuilt much (it was last refurbished and expanded in the 17th century). Ruined castles are our favorites as they usually allow visitors to touch, climb and interact with the stones versus having them roped off and viewed only. The boys scaled the remains of the castle’s turret lying upside down but intact in the courtyard.
At the Commando Memorial near Lochaber we had a brief lunch before walking around the site. A large statue there commemorates the contributions of the original British commando forces developed in World War II. Soon after we arrived at the excellent Elderslie Guest House, our B&B for the night. Since everyone had eaten so late in the day, no one was much interested in dinner, except me. I walked about a mile and a half down to the village for a bite and a dram of the local whisky at Cuon Mor.
“THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE”
After breakfast, we loaded up and drove back through downtown Oban to check out the cute fishing village. Up steep, narrow streets we found McCaig’s Tower. The Tower is visible from Oban and looks like an incomplete replica of Rome’s Coliseum. Although the story of its creation is one of folly, it is a unique and sublime park. Within the walls is a lovely garden of mature trees, climbing bushes and flowers. The walkway includes several benches for quiet reflection or conversation, and there are viewpoints where visitors can see the town and harbor below.
Our next stop was the famous Eilean Donan Castle in Dornie, the third most frequented castle in Scotland. In contrast to Kilchurn, it was fully restored in the 20th century and includes a much more touristy gift shop, restrooms, café and loads of docents, guards, life-sized wax figures and multimedia displays. The castle is very photogenic, situated on two-acre island at the intersection of three lochs – Loch Duich, Loch Long and Loch Alsh. It has been featured in several television shows and films, of which our favorite is the film “Highlander” (as the home base for Clan Macleod). We toured the inside extensively and climbed several hundred stairs along the way.
We still had a long road ahead to reach the Isle of Skye. The motorway took us through the highlands across vast expanses of purple heather and peat bogs. We skirted along the western end of the Grampian Mountains and through the shadow of Ben Nevis (Beinn Nibheis), the tallest mountain in the British Isles. The upper reaches of the mountain are devoid of any scrub or tree. The glens were filled with sheep (and a few cows) on both sides of the fences, so we were cautious that none crossed the road in front of us.
We decided to skip a formal lunch in favor of visiting another castle, which ended up being a brief pullout and picture snap of Castle Stalker near Portnacroish. Since it’s on an island accessible only by reserved boat, we just admired it from a distance.
We arrived in Portree on the Isle of Skye at a reasonable time, which gave us a much-needed chance to relax before dinner. After several days in Iceland and Scotland with a relatively bland selection of food choices, we opted to visit the one Indian restaurant in Portree – Taste of India. The food was just what we needed – spicy, flavorful and vegetarian. With full bellies and smiles, we walked back to the Conusg B&B and quickly fell asleep.
THE SKYE LOOP
Waking was tough in such a comfortable place as Conusg. Each of us had our own bedroom, effectively occupying the entire upstairs of the B&B. Even Asher and I were slow to get up, but we’d made breakfast arrangements for 8:30a.
Downstairs three of us went (leaving Ronan to sleep as long as he wanted). Breakfast was quite a spread given that we were the only guests in the house that morning, and included meats and cheeses, cereals and yogurts, fruits and jams, breads, and muffins. Plus I had an entire pot of coffee all to myself , so happily loaded up for our planned drive.
Outside was rainy and windy, with brief moments where the sun shone warmly on the heath. We headed north along the eastern edge of Skye with the weather cooperating – intermittent rain, wind and crepuscular rays of sun flowing across the landscape and sea. Our first stop was Kilt Rock, which has cliffs more than 55 meters high. Looking north from the car turnout, tall basaltic columns rise from the edge of the Sound of Raasay, forming plaits with Mealt Falls plummeting 60 meters below. On windy days, the falls don’t reach the sea at all.
Onward we rolled across the peninsula at Staffin toward the highlands of Cuith-Raing, where trails scatter in all directions across the moorland, covered in thick peat and wildflowers. This is a popular place despite the difficult roads to reach it, and the car park was completely jammed. We followed a trail that spidered across the hillsides and bluffs – it was a bit precarious but the views were incredible.
We decided to stay on the route toward Uig and the crofting villages along the northwestern lochs of Skye. The weather was getting nasty as we picked up food for lunch at our next destination, Neist Point Lighthouse. We came unprepared for picknicking (no utensils), so Angela made delicious PB&J sandwiches in the back of the car using an old hotel key card as a spreading knife. Umm, MacGyver?
Neist Point is hard to get to; the road was one of the narrowest we’d experienced but at least didn’t have cliffs at the shoulders. The lighthouse was built in 1909 and later served as a B&B for many years. It has long been abandoned, vandalized and gated off, but the hike to reach it is spectacular and gave us a break from being pinched in the car. Unfortunately it started to rain a lot harder as soon as we descended into the first of two glens on the trail. On a clearer day the point is good for viewing minke whales, dolphins, porpoises and basking sharks, but we saw only (more) sheep.
Back in Portree we walked into town and had dinner at The Isles Inn – a Hollywood location director couldn’t pick a more complete portrait of a village pub. The place was packed with locals and the food was great.
CLICK ANY PHOTO TO OPEN THE GALLERY.
