Over the sea from Skye

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Thursday

We were up early, as tends to be the case with camping, and struck the tent and packed it away. After a quick freshen up we drove into Portree where we stopped off at the bakers to pick up coffee and a bacon sandwich for breakfast, and a couple of fruit scones for later. We had decided to get the ferry from Armadale (at the southern tip of skye) back to Mallaig. It only takes about half an hour and cut out having to drive a longer route back the way that we had already seen. So we decided to head over to the western coast of the island and drive south to see what we could see. There was not much doing on the coast, and the tourist information was shut so we carried on to Carbost where we visited the Talisker distillery; where we had a bit of a tester of the whisky (very nice, but a bit strange at 11 in the morning) and went on a tour of the distilling process. We topped the visit off with a fruit scone and jam polished off in the car!
On the road again to Armadale where we picked up the ferry for a nice smooth crossing, under blue skies.
We headed to Seaview (our B&B for the night), which was handily located on the main street, and checked in. We then went out to have an explore of Mallaig in good weather and sample some very fresh fish and chips eaten out of their paper on the sea wall. (yum )

In the evening we went out to the ‘Seafood Restaurant’, where I enjoyed roasted langoustines and Toby had a Fishermans stew (Langoustines, Scallops, Cod, Haddock, Salmon, Mussels and prawns) we followed it up with homemade strawberry cheesecake and mixed berry pavlova. Food was great; would recommend it.

Friday

A hearty breakfast of locally smoked kippers and then we were on our way south towards Glasgow. We paused at the white sands of Morar (where local hero was filmed) and then at Arisaig (which is very pretty) then had a pretty straight run down to Fort William where we visited Morrisons again for a comfort break and booked a hotel for the evening.

After the brief rest we were on the way (listening to a Terry Pratchett book on CD, {I’d not been a fan to date, but it was read by Tony Robinson and I really enjoyed it}). We negociated roadworks, caravans and an accident without much delay, but ran into a bit of traffic on the M8 just in Glasgow where we sat for a little while.

Our hotel in Glasgow was basic, but located close to the centre and easy to find(not far from the Buchanan Galleries). After checking in we headed out to have a bit of an explore of the area around the hotel and Glasgow generally. We took the underground and then wandered around the city a bit before stopping for a couple of pints of Guiness and then to Pizza Hut for dinner (I realised it was the one that you and I had been to when we had been up in Glasgow shopping). We then wandered back up the hill to the hotel and watched a bit of TV before bed.

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