Isle of Skye to Glasgow

---

Once we left Torridon, we headed to the Isle of Skye. We stayed at a nice hotel that was perfectly located for trails along the Cuillin Mountains. The trail we chose was nice in the sense that it had views of many of the peaks in the Cuillin range and it wasn't too strenuous. There were some boggy patches & a couple of streams we had to manuver our way across, but it really wasn't as bad as the one we were on in Torridon the day before. It's actually kinda fun trying to figure out which rocks to jump onto to avoid falling in the water or bog.

The next day we headed north on the island to hike up to the Old Man of Storr, one of the most famous rock pinnacles, remains of ancient volcanic plugs created by landslip. It was a really beautiful day, bright & sunny with blue skies. It was very windy, but I guess you can't have everything. We really enjoyed the hike and seeing the rock formations from different angles. Sometimes you can't even recognize the pinnacles after walking along a trail for a bit. You just have to figure out which one it is by it's location.

After the Old Man of Storr, we drove further north and decided to hike to the Quiraing, another landslip with amazing views & rock formations. It was late in the afternoon and since we were running out of water, we turned back earlier than we would have liked. We decided to go back the next day to explore some more. We hiked in from a different trail, so we were able to see different views.

The Quiraing has a few points of interest that we were trying to identify both days there. Laura was obsessed with trying to find what was known as "the needle" so that she could hike up to a grassy patch known as "the table". And on the second day, someone finally explained that what we thought was the Quiraing was actually known as "the prison". He also pointed us to the needle, which we attempted to hike up to. It was very steep with many loose rocks on the trails (if you could really even call them trails) & it was a very scary ascent. We never actually made it up to the table, but it was still quite a day.

On our way from the Isle of Skye to Glencoe, we stopped for a tour of another castle, the Eilean Donan Castle. It had been restored in the 1900's and was actually quite nice. Glencoe is also amazingly beautiful & we spent a wonderful day in a couple of different trails between three mountains known as The Three Sisters of Glencoe. The first trail was a very steep ascent between two of the sisters and had beautiful waterfall views. The second trail followed a gorge & a stream between the other sister & the middle one. It lead to a hidden valley that was used back in the day by the local clan to hide their stolen cattle.

After Glencoe, we headed to Glasgow to part ways for the next leg of our trip. Laura caught a flight to Korea while Ashley made plans to travel overland to England. Scotland was so beautiful, every new destination having just as many highlights as the last. The first two countries visited on our trip so far were amazing & it will be difficult to top, but we are looking forward to the rest of our trip & what lies ahead.

Thank you to everyone who has been following along on our adventure, sending messages & posting comments. We may not respond to everyone individually, but we are reading your comments & happy to hear from you. We think people may be having trouble subscribing to our blog, but not sure how to resolve the issue other than to send out an email to people manually every time we post. If you would like to get an email whenever we post a new entry or new pix, let us know & we can start an email distribution list. Laterzzzzzz! 😊

---

Comments

[patricia]

Jealousy is theme
I have to join in the jealous crowd in all the postings. I really want to get to Isle of Skye. You two do lovely photos!!! Glad you had good ventures in Ireland. Aran Isles are trulya place that shows the work of hundreds of years to move stones about and make soil work. Did you know that those isles did not have the potato blight and took in refugees form the mainland at the time of the famine? Enjoy the next jaunt. Are ye off now to China? --patricia in arlington va

[Matt Walker]

Great posts
Great blog posts!! Keep 'em coming! And keep Che out of trouble in Beijing!! ;-) Cheers! -- Matt