meanwhile in the far north

I was ready for an adventure so I planned a long weekend away with some hiking and some visiting on the agenda.  Jay isn't really one for clambering around mountains, so he stayed home to take care of the puppies.

In the small hours of Thursday morning I hopped on a plane in Exeter, touched down not long after in Manchester and flew from there to Aberdeen.  Flying in those tiny planes when it's really rather windy was an experience.  Twice.  Kudos to both the pilots of those Flybe planes for landing them like feathers after getting chucked around like dice while trying to land.

And how sorry did I feel for the woman who was vomiting the whole way a few rows from me?  Frankly, not quite as sorry as I felt for the man sitting next to her.  Just glad it wasn't me.

First stop was the car rental office where I was expecting to collect a Peugeot 306, load my gear and my own satnav and then head for a nearby wood for a walk.  Apparently they were in desperate need to get a BMW 5 Series to Glasgow by Monday because that's what they gave me.  I declined their extra insurance (£120 for the duration) but I also declined their £1,000 excess and got Jay to call my own insurance company to cover me with £150 excess for £38.  That's more like it.  I wasn't impressed with the hard-upselling of extra unnecessary stuff, but I did really like the guy working at Sixt.  He was a real gem. 

It was so great to see Anna and Infindigo Mailat Koru, who is so much like Ulla and looks like his dad, Salo.  I hadn't seen him since he moved to Aberdeenshire at the age of 8 weeks.  I had heard he was BIG, and so I was prepared for him to be another stonker like his brothers Siinto and Jake.  However, he wasn't a stonker at all.  More the size of Loki, but with quite a sizeable coat.  I took lots of photos of him, but sadly most of them were over-exposed.  There are only a couple of usable shots.  That lovely coat in that sunshine, I guess. 

 

  

Massive thank you to Anna for clearing her day and driving all the way down so that we could meet and have that fantastic walk.  I must say that Aberdeen was an eye-opener.  I didn't know what to expect weather-wise or how cold it would be.  The forecast said chilly, but we were shedding layers hand-over-fist as the sun came out and the waterproof jackets disappeared.

Then I jumped into the rental car and headed west, destination the Isle of Skye.  The drive from Aberdeen to Inverness was nice enough, if somewhat unremarkable.  I did pass through a few pretty towns, the star of which was Elgin, and I did see more than a few beautiful rivers, my favorite of which was the Lossie.  I think.

In Inverness I found the huge Tiso Outdoor Experience shop and managed (somehow) to limit my purchase to some OS maps of Skye.  Then it was back into the car for the second half of the journey.

I had intended to go via Loch Ness, but the satnav took me a different way.  I challenge anyone to find a more beautiful drive than the Lochcarron route to Skye.  If you can manage to find a day with some sunshine and blue between the clouds, as I did, so much the better.  The scenery was breathtaking in every direction for the entire drive.  It should have taken me about 2.5 hours to get from Inverness to Skye, but in the end it took rather longer because I kept stopping to take photos.  Most of which don't do the views one iota of justice.  And there were plenty of amazing sights that I missed because I passed them before I was able to get the camera out.  If you go to northern Scotland, do yourself a favour and take this trip.

The closer I got to Skye, the better the views.  And sometimes I got a pretty good shot just by sticking the camera out the car window.

Finally at about 7pm I reached my hotel - the Viewfield House hotel in Portree.  To be honest, the only reason I chose this place was because, apart from one or two hostels offering 20-to-a-room, this was absolutely the only accommodation I could find available when I booked my trip 6 months ago.  You need to plan in advance for Skye.  Anyway, it's a lovely hotel, a gorgeous Victorian country house with friendly people and very comfortable rooms.  I could do without the dead animals adorning the walls, but even some of those are impressive.

 

The landing outside my room smelled alarmingly like mothballs, but fortunately the room did not.  As for the location of the hotel, full marks for views.  Just for a change.

Being the summer solstice, the nights way up here in the north come late.  Really late.  It didn't get properly dark until sometime around 3am and then the sky started to lighten up again.  Dusk at 10:30pm.  

I didn't sleep really well.  Perhaps it was nerves because the next day was my planned trip up the Quiraing.  And that turned out to be an entirely different adventure than I was planning on.