Isle of Skye - Day 7
We spent a pleasant enough evening last night watching an awful film called "Safe", which featured Jason Statham beating various people up in order to save a 10 year old mathematical genius who didn't like maths. But George's DVD player worked a treat and we are looking forward to watching Forrest Gump next time we have electric hook up.
Neither of us had a particularly good night's sleep last night - I was woken several times by the wind rocking George. We eventually dragged ourselves out of bed at about 9am, when the wind and rain seemed to have died down a bit. By the time we'd had breakfast and packed up, the rain had stopped and the wind had dropped to a level where I might have considered letting George have his pop top up if we weren't leaving.
Clearly the woman in the laundry room had been wrong with her weather prediction. But the day was OK from mid morning - overcast and misty, with low clouds, but not raining. So the man in reception was not far off with his forecast. We decided we'd have a bit of a lazy day and go to Dunvegan Castle, the seat of the Macloud Clan for 25 ish generations, rather than risk the weather.
The castle is one of the indoor type castles with oil paintings, and swords and things in glass cases to look at. On the whole, I prefer ruined castles, but that would have defeated the object of staying warm and dry indoors. We were greeted by a slightly odd Welsh lady at the door, who was rather surprised at having some English visitors. It turned out that she'd come to visit Skye on the Sunday, and bought a small field on the Thursday, and had never left, or looked back since. It all sound a bit like a Craig David song to me. She was quite insistent that this was in no way impulsive, and we didn't like to argue with all the ceremonial swords lying around.
There were two things that I found particularly interesting about the castle, or should I say it's occupants...
1. There has only ever been one female Macloud clan chief - Flora - who of course reached the dizzy heights due to her various male relatives being unable to produce enough Y chromosomes at the critical time. When one of her own children eventually succeeded, she relinquished her leadership to the current chief, her grandson John.
2. When a new clan chief is "sworn in", he (or she) has to "down in one" half a gallon of claret (!) from a ceremonial drinking horn (a hollow horn, possibly from a Highland Cow or woolly mammoth, with a tassle and a silver rim). Half a gallon! I came to the conclusion that they must either water down the wine, or use ribena. Or maybe I'm just not cut out to be the head of a Scottish clan. I think I would have to drink mine out of the antichrist bottle rather than the ceremonial horn.
After we'd had our fill of Scottish history, we stopped for lunch at the cafe, which was called Macloud's Tables - those of you who know your Skye peaks will be suitably impressed by the double meaning - before heading off in George towards the Cuillin hills in the southern part of Skye.
On route, we failed miserably to buy the ever elusive bread rolls, and I for one was starting to get quite concerned about tomorrow's packed lunch. We did however stop off at a strange shop advertising "game and oysters". There was a young Scottish man in there, dressed in butchers wellies, and a yellow rubber apron (serial killer clothes if ever I've seen them), who was very chatty and friendly, but slightly odd when he started telling us about his pet pig, who was now minced up in the freezer behind us.
Never deterred by a little strangeness, we bought some diced venison (shot in the Cuillins - possibly using a sniper scope like the one in the scary gun shop), and some of the pet pig sausages.
We drove around for a while, surrounded by amazing scenery that was hidden in the clouds, and ended up at Glen Brittle campsite, which is where we plan to spend tomorrow or Tuesday night. We sneakily used the toilets, and, finally found a loaf of freshly baked bread in the campsite shop of all places! So my worries about lunch are over, and breakfast plans have changed from porridge, to egg, bacon, and slightly fried bread dripping with butter.
We've stopped for the night a bit further up Glen Brittle from the campsite - in a little car park in the forest. Either the wind has dropped, or the trees are sheltering us, but George's pop top is up so we have a bit more room. The woods are a quite creepy - full of red toadstools with white spots, and wisps of mist amongst the trees, and that was just in daylight. I've yet to venture outside in darkness.
Apart from bread, tomorrow will involve breaking Claire's new boots in, either on a forest walk, or maybe a coastal walk if the weather is nice.
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Location:Isle of Skye
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