Over the seas
skye1, originally uploaded by Janey M.
It's a long drive to Skye. You head NORTH on the M6, and then continue heading NORTH until you run out of mainland. If you've gone the right way, you cross the bridge. If your Satnav has taken you the wrong way, you end up at the edge of the sea at Mallaig to discover the last ferry has gone and you've added 100 miles to your journey with nothing to do but turn around and head back to Fort William.
Luckily I was canny to the Satnav trick.
We didn't see much of Skye. We'd stopped at Eilean Donan castle, where the tide was out so we didn't bother taking any photographs. Then we left the mainland, across the bridge. We stopped at Kyleakin, and went to the Brightwater Centre, and admired the view from the old dejected ferry slipway, where Caisteal Maol juts out across the water.
Broadford was out next stop, where there is a small tourist information point, which is really a giftshop with some leaflets, and could do little to help the trickling stream of sad, disorganised tourists, who were looking for somewhere to stay on a Friday night in August, or who had booked somewhere, but forgotten what it was called, or where it was. There is also a large Co-op and petrol station - both highly useful, and The Harbour Restaurant which serves tasty food, but is sadly up for sale.
We stopped over at the Skyewalker Hostel, in all its amusing Star Wars related punning glory - worth a visit just to see the dome, and settled down after a wee drink at the Taigh Ailean Hotel were the barman was an ex-commando, and has the t-shirt to prove it if you couldn't work it out from the size of his shoulders.
It would be up early in the morning, for the next stage of the adventure...