MaineGG

Your use of the historical present tense has the effect, I think, of making your readers almost a part of the experience. This works really well in your trip reports. Looking forward to reading more.

LCBoniti

Lovely, lovely trip report. Everything sounds wonderful!

lauren_s_kahn

Ah, Scotland. Am enjoying your report.

I have home exchanged for the Edinburgh Fringe/International Festival twice, but not in years. I have been to Culloden Battlefield and Clava Cairns but not to a lot of the other places you mentioned so far in your report.

I'll be winging my way West over the Atlantic after a summer spent in France and Spain (home exchange: Toulouse; home hospitality: Bordeaux; home exchange: Salamanca). I'll check in when I return.

carolyn

I am really enjoying your report, too, but you had me at sticky toffee pudding. We are thinking about Scotland for next year.

janisj

Terrific report . . Sheila sounds like an AMAZING hostess.

Love the Bullers of Buchan . . . perpendicularly tubulated

>>I can't get enough of this sort of thing; I could happily spend a week or two visiting them all.<<

I've done that a couple of times - concentrating on hill forts and standing stones

annhig

but you had me at sticky toffee pudding.>>

may I, Nikki?

try this one, carolyn:

http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/c...fee-sauce.html

Nikki

As I reread this, I see I gave the wrong link for information about the Brandsbutt Pictish Stone. This one should work:
http://www.historic-scotland.gov.uk/...?PropID=PL_038

caroline_edinburgh

Really enjoying your report, Nikki! Very well written and informative as always. You seem to have been blessed with great weather, and you visited quite a few places I never did in 18 years there! Although we did once stay at the Fairmont St Andrews (then the St Andrew's Bay Hotel), for a wine weekend What wonderful hospitality from Sheila - she really treated you! And Kinloch Lodge sounds wonderful, including dinner. Now you know what the fuss is about, on your next trip to Edinburgh go to Martin Wishart!

"zoning laws prevent development on lots that do not already have buildings on them" - unless your name is Donald Trump...

Particularly looking forward to enjoying the Edinburgh festivals vicariously through your eyes. We do miss that time of year in Edinburgh, although it was mitigated a bit this year by our first experience of the Biennale Theatre festival, as you may have read in DH's blog.

Gordon_R

I've stayed at the Fairmont too - didn't cost me a penny as we won it as a prize in a competition. It's very nice but massively expensive and has a very pronounced north American atmosphere - doesn't feel much like Scotland at all.

caroline_edinburgh

Also meant to say I'm particularly looking forward to hearing about your lunch at the Three Chimneys, which we always hoped to get to but never did. I wonder if you had the famous hot maramalade pudding?

noratravel

Nikki
I'm in Boston, and just wondering where on the Cape you are! (Just got back from a week in Truro). Also wondering how you chose Invernairn Inn? I've been looking for a place in Nairn or Inverness, and was thinking about Bunchrew House. Reviews for both Bunchrew and Invernairn say the same things: in need of sprucing up. But Bunchrew is so much more expensive.

Love your report and fabulous photos, thanks for sharing!

Nikki

Nora, our house is in Brewster.

The Invernairne Guest House is very well maintained, at least all the parts I saw. We stayed in the gorgeous ground floor seaview room. I chose it because I liked the look of the place, the reviews seemed fine, it is in a wonderful location, and the price was reasonable. I would have been happy to stay longer.

Nikki

We meet again in the dining room for breakfast Wednesday morning. There is a menu, but it is very hard to choose. The waitress suggests I can have a taste of that smoked salmon along with the grill. And I want the porridge, but I'd really like to taste the stewed apricots and prunes with creme fraiche. No problem, they'll bring me a bowl of each.

First come the scones with butter and jam, then comes the porridge and the stewed fruit.

I eat oatmeal at home almost every day. I cook steel cut oats in a batch large enough to last me a few days because I really like the chewiness of it. The porridge at Kinloch Lodge is so much better that I still have the taste of it in my mouth as I write this three weeks later. More cream? Yes, please. And the stewed fruit with creme fraiche is the nectar of the gods. Alan can't understand why anyone would want to order such a thing. And then he finishes mine.

Finally they bring me a plate with sausage, bacon, eggs, tomato, mushroom, and black pudding, with a side of hot smoked salmon.

After they revive me, we pack up and check out of Kinloch Lodge. When we talk about the cost as we drive away, we realize how much the meals we have had are worth and decide that the rooms were not so expensive after all. I am ready to go back tomorrow.

We drive through the dramatic landscape of Skye toward Portree. We make a brief stop (at the courthouse and a bakery, no, I am not making this up) and then drive along the shore of the Trotternish Peninsula toward the spectacular cliffs of the Storr. There is a prominent rocky outcrop known as the Old Man of Storr (somewhat reminiscent of New Hampshire's Old Man of the Mountain, an iconic rocky face that has collapsed and sadly is no more).

We have planned to make this a brief stop on a circuit of the peninsula, but there is no such thing as a brief stop. Ellen asks some hikers she sees descending the trail how long it takes to get up to a place where there is a good view, and they tell her about half an hour. So she, Alan, and Alan decide to head up.

The guidebook I have says to walk up the forested trail, but the forest has been cut down and the trees are lying on the ground. This gives the landscape a strange appearance. We learn that this is a nationwide initiative to replace the monoculture of non-native conifers with native species in the hope of regenerating a mixed hardwood forest.

While the sturdier members of the party are hiking, I wander around the area taking photos. Some time later the hikers return, all saying that the climb was more than they had bargained for.

We drive on until we get to the parking area for the Mealt Waterfall and Kilt Rock. The day has become beautifully clear, and the folds of the rocky cliff form a dramatic backdrop to the waterfall plunging into the sea, which is a gorgeous shade of blue. We sit on a rock and have a picnic lunch with the supplies we bought at the bakery in Portree.

lobo_mau

WOW!!! I have just reopened my list of places to visit before I die!!! Everything looks so beautiful! And you and Alan look great too.

Ackislander

My wife and a friend stayed at Kinloch Lodge a few years back. She told me it was "lovely."

Had she described the food in your level of description, I would have been insanely jealous.

Marvelous!

Nikki

Ackislander, I believe it was your response to my query about places to stay on Skye that led me to the Kinloch Lodge.

Nikki

We want to get to the Highland Games in Portree and decide there is not time to complete our circuit of the Trotternish Peninsula. So we drive back into town, park the car, and follow the crowds up the hill called the Meall (in English, the Lump) to the games field. We want to get there in time to see the tug of war, which is scheduled for 3:15. It turns out we needn't have hurried, they are running at least an hour and a half behind schedule.

At the Aboyne games, most of the contestants in the heavy events were locals. But here they are an international bunch. One comes from Poland, one from Germany, one from Texas, and one from Washington, DC. Ellen and Alan live near DC, but they don't seem to know him. We wonder what inspires a guy from Washington, DC to take up something like the caber toss, and where he has the opportunity to learn the skill.

I spend some time sitting next to a woman who is watching the games with her two active young grandsons. She lives on Skye and her daughter and grandchildren are visiting. We talk about growing up on Skye, where she had to board at school when she was in high school and go home only on weekends. Now there are school buses, and students have a choice of attending high school in Portree or on the mainland in Plockton.

As the bagpipe band marches past us up the hill, I notice my companion is humming the tune. I ask whether the tunes they play are ones that everybody knows, and she says yes. She also knows just about everyone in the band and the families of the kids competing in the highland dancing contests. While the games attract international visitors and competitors in the heavy events, this is still very much a community celebration.

We leave before the games are formally concluded, but it is a long drive back to the Sleat Peninsula, where our next hotel is located, and we want to get there before dark. We are staying at the Ardvasar Hotel for two nights. It turns out that we are not doing anything on the Sleat Peninsula but sleeping for our entire stay on Skye, but this is where I was able to find rooms for us. We have a late dinner in the hotel's lounge bar and call it a night.

irishface

Still reading and enjoying! (I don't care what tense you write in as long as you keep it consistent!)

ParisAmsterdam

Another wonderful report Nikki... I'm following along using your links and Google Maps. A real treat. ;^)

Nikki

Thursday we start the day with a drive to the Talisker distillery in Carbost. Unlike the Glenfiddich tour, this one is not free, and no photos are allowed inside the distillery. It appears they are afraid the fumes will cause cameras to spontaneously combust. A fire did destroy the distillery in 1960, so perhaps they are more sensitive than most.

This is a much smaller operation than Glenfiddich. It is interesting to contrast the methods used in the different distilleries; Alan comments that it is like a religion for each to do it their own way. At Glenfiddich, they age some whisky in casks that previously contained bourbon and some in casks that previously contained sherry, then they "marry" the two. At Talisker everything is aged in bourbon casks, and then only the special distiller's edition spends a few months at the end in sherry casks.

A sign along the road outside the distillery leads us to a farm stand that sells fresh local game and seafood, and I wish for a moment that we were staying in a house on Skye and could try some of this, but I settle for buying some cheese and sliced smoked duck breast, and a couple of jars of pate.

We decide to take a detour and try to find a path I have read about that goes to Talisker Bay. We have a reservation for lunch at the Three Chimneys, and it becomes clear as we drive along the increasingly narrow roads that we will only have time to get to the beginning of the trail and not to actually walk on it, but Alan is having fun driving in this very unpeopled area. We do run into two other cars at a crossroads. We all compare notes. One is trying to locate the distillery, and we can point him in the right direction. The other is trying to find Talisker Bay, as we are.

We do get to the end of the road, and we see why my guidebook says to "park carefully". There are peacocks wandering in the middle of the road, impeding any forward motion. A mail truck comes through and has to slow to avoid hitting the birds. I ask if the driver almost kills one every day, and he answers, "One of these days I'll have one in a pot." We wonder that mail delivery comes to this remote spot.

Some walkers are returning along the path and we ask how long it takes to get to the bay. They confirm that it takes more time than we have available, so we carefully turn the car around, avoid killing any feathered creatures, and head back toward relative civilization. These are one track roads, but they are actually the first we have encountered on Skye. Until now, we have been on very good roads with at least as much room as similar roads throughout Scotland.

The Three Chimneys restaurant is located in Colbost, on the far northwestern corner of the Isle of Skye. We reserved for lunch before leaving for Scotland, one of the only times I have ever traveled abroad with a specific reservation for a meal. I do enjoy it; it is quite good, but not close to the standard of our dinner at Kinloch Lodge.

I start with charred blade and slow cooked tongue of Black Isle beef. Then I have a salmon dish with lobster tomalley, and I finish with a cheese selection. I try some of Ellen's Skye shellfish bree, an outstanding soup. I do not try the hot marmalade pudding, although now I wish I had. There is a couple from Ireland dining at the next table who come here regularly and love this dish so much that the woman has gotten the recipe and makes it at home regularly.

From here we drive a few minutes farther along the road to Skye Silver, a shop selling original silver jewelry designed on Skye and sold only at this store and on their website. Ellen says it will be a two minute stop. But there is no such thing as a quick stop; I can not leave here without buying some gifts.

I am afraid that my purchases will make us miss the opening hours at Dunvegan Castle, our next stop, but we find that it is open later than we thought, and we go inside. One of the interesting things here is a letter from Dr. Samuel Johnson thanking the MacLeod family (who still live in the castle) for their hospitality. We have been following in the footsteps of Dr. Johnson and his biographer, James Boswell, as we travel across Scotland, reading their impressions from the eighteenth century of the sights we are seeing in the twenty-first century. It feels a bit like we have caught up with them here.

As we leave, we are driven back to our car by hordes of midges attacking our heads, somewhat spoiling the peaceful effect of the castle's gardens.

On the road back across Skye near Bracadale, we spot a sign and parking area for Dun Beag Broch. This is a stone structure high up a steep meadow covered in heather and sheep droppings. There are several hundred forts of this type found throughout northern and western Scotland, dating from the iron age.
http://web.undiscoveredscotland.com/skye/dunbeagbroch/

I climb up the hill at my own slow pace while the others clamber up and onto the rocky structure. I am happy just to get up to the base of it; three years ago, before my two knee replacements, I would have been unable to walk up this hill. Ellen and Alan are waving to me from the top of the fort. Alan says he feels like a warrior chieftain. I'm feeling pretty triumphant myself.

But going down the steep slope is a bit more challenging, and I am grateful for my husband's supporting arm.

We stop for dinner at the large bar and restaurant attached to the Sligachan Inn. There is a tour group taking up a good part of the restaurant when we arrive. They have lots of camera equipment, and we learn that they are on a photographic tour and are now heading up to the Old Man of Storr. As they leave, we grab one of their tables. But service remains slow, the waitstaff and the kitchen are overwhelmed.

The food, when it does come, is excellent. I start with scallops cooked with their roe and black pudding. Then Alan and I share a pheasant and bacon pie and beer battered fish and chips.