Two Castles, neither on a hill

October 6, 2022

Today Lauren finally made it! Wooohoo!! However, it meant I had to leave the beautiful Airbnb at the farm at 630 am. It was such a lovely evening, I slept VERY well and was refreshed when I woke up.

The rain had begun, it wasn’t horrible, but enough that driving on the two-lane highway made me a bit nervous. I let people pass me when they could (they have pull-offs often) and it was very nice to have the BMW that I was so familiar with to drive in the weather that I am not as familiar with in the last ten years living in California.

Thankfully I had gotten the 411 about picking people up from the airport yesterday and so felt very comfortable waiting for her today. However, she did have a delay in her service turning on so she had to wait a bit for me to get her since we couldn’t communicate. It cost 4 pounds to pick someone up at the airport and 4 pounds to drop them off! We learned the dropoff because I made a wrong exit of a roundabout.

After Lauren was locked and loaded in the car, we pulled back to where I waited for her to decide what to do. We started with the castle from Outlander. Before our quick drive to the castle, she needed coffee and of course, its snack time! After we were fueled up, off to the castle!

All I know is that Outlander is a show about someone who can travel through a rock0 not my kind of show. However, the castle was cool, even though we could only see one side, because they had just finished up filming yesterday and the castle itself wasn’t open. Thankfully they aren’t rude and only charge half price for a visit to take a look at the cast….which in reality could have been viewed from the car park, but the people were nice and Lauren wanted to see that the MOST.

Scottish roads are interesting They have major highways and tiny one-lane roads. Ive now driven on all types but dirt, though some have come close to qualifying as such. We spent about 4 hours driving today to get to our Isle of Skye home for the next two nights. Much of the 4 hours of the drive consisted of rain. Driving rain sprinkling rain, RAIN!

We stopped in Perth for a Tesco to get some food! And it did not disappoint! We found a Friends lunch box on clearance so we could store cold food and got tons of car snacks! Grocery shopping is so much fun in foreign countries! We had a little car lunch and then drove around town. Lauren found a yarn store, so I dropped her off while I circled the block for a spot! She got her first yarn of the trip!

After Perth we hit the road again to Skye and stopped at another Castle, the Eilean Donan Castle. This castle is privately owned! Its on a tiny little island right off Skye. It has been built and rebuilt at least 4 times. It now has a footbridge to walk over on, but before it was boat access only. I think it was part of the 1920s rebuild.

After the castle, we decided to try for dinner, and this turned out to be much harder than either of us expected. There are many places to eat, but either they were not open, didn’t have space, or simply weren’t serving at the time. After an hour of driving, we found a sign for Indian food and followed it. We were not disappointed. It was a great meal, however, they only took cash, so thankfully the rain quit just long enough for me to walk over to the bank and grab some cash when we were done eating.

After dinner, we had a 45-minute drive to our Airbnb for two nights. It’s a mini cabin! Tiny little place with bunk beds and a queen bed. Its fine for our needs, especially with the on-demand hot water!