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| Canowindra's lovely breakfast room. |
Breakfast at Canowindra B&B this morning was terrific. Georgie has her menu broken down so that you can order exactly what you want. The full Scottish breakfast is a bit much for both Smoky and me, so today we had porridge followed by eggs and sausage for Smoky and mushroom, tomatoes, and baked beans for me.
We told Georgie that she gets the prize for the best porridge so far. She uses steel-cut oats. They take a lot longer to prepare, but it is really worth the effort. I dressed mine up with fresh fruit from Georgie's buffet table, her homemade granola, and cream. It was so delicious.
We made a quick trip into Portree to visit Inside Out, a well-stocked outdoor equipment shop. Smoky needed a waterproof hat, since both rain and midges were getting through his old one. We also needed to find the latest thing for midge control, a spray called Smidge. Inside Out had just sold the last bottle, but we found some at the food coop just around the corner! Watch out, midges!!
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| Old Man of Storr stands proudly against a cloudless sky. |
From Portree we followed A855 around the north side of Sky onto the Trotternish Peninsula. Because of the beautiful weather, we stopped at several viewpoints along the way. The Old Man of Storr, an interesting rock formation that is part of a rocky outcropping overlooking the Sound of Raasay, was standing proudly out for everyone to see, and Smoky got lots of pictures of it.
We drove a little further down the road to a pull-off from which there is a view of Mealt waterfall and Kilt Rock. Even though you can see both from the viewing platform, a better view would be several hundred feet away from shore! This pull-off was crowded with people, many of them from tour buses.
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| Kilt Rock from overlook. |
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| Closer view of Kilt Rock. |
Back on the road, we saw a sign on the left just before Staffin that said simply "Pie." I had read last night about the Skye Pie Cafe at the Glenview Hotel. We had found it! Smoky quickly found a place to turn around and we drove back to squeeze ourselves into the crowded parking lot. Unfortunately, every table was filled and they were turning people away except for take-away food. We ordered an apple crumble and ate it in the car. My, my, I can see why this little cafe was so crowded. That pie was delicious. They have all kinds of savory and sweet pies. We hoped to stop back in on our way home this evening, but they were already closed.
Toward the end of the Trotternish Peninsula, the road narrows dramatically (yep, one lane with turnouts), and there was a good bit of traffic today, probably because of the lovely weather. The views were incredible (if you were brave enough to take your eye off the road).
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| Croft dwellings at the Skye Museum of Island Life. |
As we headed down the west coast, we came to the Skye Museum of Island Life. We had read about this museum on the web before our trip, and the photos of the croft dwellings looked very interesting. The museum occupies a series of old croft-style buildings which are set up to look very much like dwellings looked several hundred years ago in Scotland. The museum has on display a lot of tools from the time period and also interesting correspondence, old documents, and photographs. The weaver's cottage had an old loom and a number of pieces of woven fabric that could have been made on a loom like that.
Shortly after leaving the museum, we turned left onto a very narrow, one-lane road that takes you across the Quirraing. Here's what Wikipedia says about the Quirraing:
The Quiraing is a landslip on the eastern face of Meall na Suiramach, the northernmost summit of the Trotternish on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. The whole of the Trotternish Ridge escarpment was formed by a great series of landslips; the Quiraing is the only part of the slip still moving, the road at its base, near Flodigarry, requires repairs each year.We had heard that the views from this road were amazing. The road crosses over the top of the mountain. Once we got closer to Staffin Bay again, the landslips described in the paragraph above became much more evident. The landscape looks other worldly. Smoky commented that he expected to see "Lord of the Rings" characters pop out at any moment.
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| View from the Quirrang walk. |
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| Walking down the Quirrang. |
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| The Quirrang winds along the edge of the rocky outcropping. |
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| Smoky's favorite shot of the Quirrang and its amazing scenery. |
We hiked along the Quiraing walk for a while. It is a very popular hike and provides quite a few photo opportunities for visitors. What fun to photograph this really unique place.
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| From one overlook, we watched shepherds herd their flock with the help of several really great border collies. |
Once we got back in the car, it was a reasonably short drive back to Portree. We stopped at the Isle Inn Pub for dinner. Our friends Susie and Roger ate there several times on their trip to Skye and had recommended it to us. The Isle Inn Pub is a small place, bar on one side of the entrance and restaurant on the other. We were lucky to get a table right away. I asked our waitress what the soup of the day was. She said "cream of georgette" (at least I think that is what she said). I had overheard her tell someone else it was a cucumber soup. I ordered it anyway, even though I had never heard of a hot cucumber soup. It was delicious, but I couldn't taste any cucumber. A google search came up with no hits. Smoky had vegetarian lasagne. The bites he shared with me had eggplant, noodles and cheese. It was yummy! Then we shared a sticky toffee pudding, which is rapidly becoming our favorite Scottish desert. Check out this website for a recipe that looked very much like what we had tonight. The Isle Inn Pub definitely gets a thumbs up!
[Update on the soup: it must have been cream of courgette, which is a variety of zucchini, made with onions and potatoes and pureed till smooth. This sounds like what I was eating! Delicious!]
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| These one-lane roads take all kinds of traffic, both hard and soft! | ||
Tomorrow we head south to Broadford and a beach area west of there recommended by a photographer we met today when we were photographing the Old Man of Storr.
--Shann
So beautiful!
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