Isle of Skye

Our most anticipated destination for our trip was the Isle of Skye where we had big plans to hike the bejeezus out of the rugged coastline. Our base for our travels here was a most awesome cottage Jay found us in the western side of Loch Dunvegan where we were regularly visited by sheep, bunnies, and various birds. It was a little like Cinderella except that they did not all work together to craft me a fancy dress. 

The roads on the Isle of Skye are single lanes, so you have to pull over if there is oncoming traffic. Most of the traffic though is composed of what we called assasins-sheep who would dodge in front of your car in a s seemingly pre-planned attempt to halt your progress. 

Our only real obstacle in exploring the island was the weather that causes the Isle of Skye to be called the Isle of Mist. Despite super REI rain gear and a whole lot of gumption, the rain and wind made us scale back our hiking goals a bit. We still had a few great hikes but occasionally ended up losing our path in the mist, calf deep in mud, following sheep tracks. 

One of my favorite hikes here was Greshornish, a cute small peninsula where sheep were not bred for a spell. The first sheep in the area ran in circles and fell over dead, so he locals thought the fairies had witched them. Years later, someone suggested that they might have just eaten poisonous plants and had them tested. The plants were fine though, and fairies seemed to be the culprit. Later still, someone proposed that it could be the fault of snails on the plants the sheep had eaten. No go though. But finally it was discovered that there were poisonous bugs in some of the snails on the plants that caused the deaths. not fairies.

Also fun, this is a castle ruin of the MacDonalds where the ghost of a slain nursemaid is said to haunt the area. She was killed after "accidentally" dropping the baby son of the clan chief from the window. A local told us it really was an accident. I put the quotation marks in purely from my imagination.