Isle of Skye - Day 2
I got up at 7.30am today when my alarm went off. Getting Claire out of bed was more difficult, but I managed eventually. It seems that the memory foam mattress topper was money well spent anyway. Last night was uneventful, with no unexplained noises or lights outside, and we both slept fairly well. We were on the road just before 9am. It was raining on and off, but the scenery was 100% more interesting than yesterday, which was spent mostly on the motorway.We stopped for breakfast after about an hour at the Green Welly Stop, which is a few miles north of Crianlarich. We were both starving, and looking forward to our bagels.
One of the things I bought for George recently is a Sandwich Knife made by a company called Kuhn Rikon, who make very good knives. I already have one of their bread knives at home, which is exceptionally good at cutting bread, and is the reason why I bought the Sandwich Knife. Anyway, I was happily cutting the bagels in half, all the while being suitably impressed by the Sandwich Knife, and thinking "I must be careful not to cut myself", when, yes, you guessed, I carried on slicing right through the bagel and into my finger. You probably saw this coming as soon as I mentioned the word Knife, especially when you noticed it was Capitalised. I certainly should have seen it coming, as I also had a similar accident with the afore mentioned bread knife a while back.
The end result of all this, is that Claire had to finish cooking the breakfast, while I patched my finger up and then spent 10 minutes lying on George's floor feeling queasy. I'm OK with other people's blood these days, but still not with my own. It's just a good job that George has his own First Aid Kit for such moments.
I have inspected The Finger this evening and don't really understand what all the fuss was about.
I should really tell you something about our day, rather than just my finger. After I'd recovered enough to get back behind the wheel, we continued our journey through the Highlands. Our route was up to Crianlarich, then Fort William, and to Skye via the bridge. The rain had pretty much cleared up by late morning, and we were treated to amazing views of the mountains, lochs and waterfalls, some shrouded in clouds, and some behind rainbows.
We stopped at one viewpoint, initially to look at a rainbow, but then noticed that there were hundreds of piles of rocks, like mini cairns, on the land by the side of the road. It was quite spooky really, and we were glad we hadn't stopped there after dark, to wake up to them at day break.
We arrived on Skye late afternoon, and have stopped for the night near a village called Staffin, which is in the North Eastern area. It's about as far North as we will be going. We've found a spot right on the coast, by a little beach, where we can hear the sea from the van.
George had a near miss when we arrived, when I only just managed to save him from an inept Japanese tourist. (You should know by now that no blog of mine would be complete without the appearance of an annoying Japanese tourist).
This particular one was part of a convoy of 3 cars full, none of which seemed to have any concept of the etiquette required on single track roads with passing places, or indeed how to drive at all. They just ignored the passing places, leaving me to drive George onto the verge to let them pass. I had to shout out of the window at the first car to stop him ploughing straight into the side of George. The first car squeezed through with literally about an inch to spare, so after that I decided to reverse George back rather than gamble further with his body panels. I am pleased to report that I can drive better backwards than any of them could drive forwards. George remained rather quiet about his Japanese roots, and I wonder if he was a bit embarrassed by his heritage.
We are only a few miles from the start of tomorrow's walk, which is to a place called The Quiraing. It's not a very long walk, but will be far more energetic than we've been for the last couple of days. And there are interesting rocks there.
After that, were are going to stay on a camp site near the main town of Portree, where we will get clean, and then treat ourselves to a meal in town.
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Location:Isle of Skye
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