Raining on Skye

Saturday May 20

Brutally early alarm, after the last week of laissez-fair. Both my clock and my phone (belt and braces job) went off at 5.20 a.m. Beds had to be stripped, the house left 'as you would want to find it' and then, a 20 mile drive to Lochmaddy to queue for the ferry by 6.45 at the latest.
We increasingly resent having to clean the rental cottage before leaving, the rent should cover someone to do that for us. The Boat of Garten rental does. The vacuum here is so heavy that neither of us could carry it upstairs. The cottage looked spotless, we only used three rooms. It was also raining heavily this morning, not good for final packing. It reminded me of taking children camping in North Wales and dreading having to pack wet tents and then dry them when we got home.
Corny the Crake bade us a muted farewell, an invisible one of course.
A couple we see every year were queued in front of us in the 'lift lane'. Their little Schnauzer is full of beans. We were so packed into the lift that his owner said that he hoped that the dog didn't mistake our legs for trees.
BB was also on the boat and had been more successful than us (not difficult) in moth trapping. The cottage he uses in Boat of Garten is riverside and brilliant for moths. He also promised Pam a copy of an expensive moth book by Clancy, he knows the author and acquired some free copies. Let's hope he brings it with him to Norfolk. I have a copy already, birthday present last year but, another would be great, if only to give away.
Another mill pond crossing, no birds seen as it was bitterly cold on deck. We were incarcerated in the lounge with a busload of noisy schoolchildren and  unable to see through dirty windows.
The drive from Uig to the mainland was long and very wet. Two years out of three, our drives on here have been marred by heavy rain. Maybe that's one of the reasons we are not fond of the island despite it being chosen as the fourth best island in the world. There are a lot of foreign tourists, it must be well marketed. A traffic calming number of huge motorhomes too.
Despite the conditions and, with plenty of time to spare, we stopped to take photos of the castle which must have appeared on more calendars than any other. Eileann Donan. Why???
It's certainly not the prettiest. Maybe it's better from the other side.


On days like this, I can imagine kilted Highlanders swashbuckling through the glens, tammies awry, wet kilts swishing round their ankles. Surely they wore long kilts? Less draughty on the nethers.
It isn't a long drive to Fort William, we detoured a few times. One was to the Ben Nevis Gondola Ticket Office, which is also an outdoor centre for the area. We were entertained by cyclists hurtling down the mountain doing bunny jumps over stone walls onto flatter ground below. The cross country, muddy bit, was mostly out of sight. I think they were wearing most of it down their fronts.
Morrisson's to buy to-night's salad meal and, to have a hot drink, before deciding it was still a bit early for the B and B. An hour spent reading, doing crosswords and word games beside the loch and, at last, indoors for the evening. Very nice room with a large window viewing Loch Linnhe, which is a mere 50 metres away. Pam's eyes lit up at the sight of two large slices of home-made fruit cake waiting on the tea tray.
Almost best of all. Good WiFi so that I could finish yesterday's and complete to-day's Blog in record time.

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