Hodge Holiday 2013 - Isle of Skye

Last winter we were sat watching TV thinking what shall we do this summer when an advert came on tv saying 'Visit Scotland' and that was all the convicing we needed. Having visited Scotland a handful of times before I remember leaving the highlands thinking I must revisit with Naomi. So a bit of googling and we came up with a plan of visiting the Isle of Skye with a day in Fort William to climb Ben Nevis. Our previous holiday was a couple of days camping in Snowdon which was a little bit on the damp side so with us deciding to visit Scotland we decided a guaranteed dry home would be suitable especially if we're driving so far! Google came up with this suggestion and we fell in love. So with our plan set we went off Our drive up was split with a nice overnight stop at our friends Jon and Kate who live in Leeds. Which ment our final drive into skye wouldn't be quite as tiring through the lovely Scottish scenery. We stopped off and had lunch beside Loch Lomand:

Which was a nice little break before driving through the amazing scenery which gets you through to Fort William, from Fort William we continued onto the Isle of Skye originally intending to go via the bridge but satnav had other ideas:

From the boat we finally made it to Skye, fish and chips then bed. We awoke to find that our little shepard huts had quite the nice view:

Our holiday was planned to consist of lots of walking mixed in with food, drink and reading our books. I'd brought with me my kindle whilst naomi had brough a large handful of the ungreen paper variety. Tehe. Our first planned walk was Boreraig and Suisnish however I planned to cut the corner off as we'd started quite late in the day. However once going off the track it became apparent that the footpath was more of a guide over the heather:

So progress was slower than had we just kept to the normal loop (typical) so another slight diversion saw us break the unbreakable rule of doubling back on ourselves to the car. However as with road riding its all about the view... well so I told myself.

The walk covered going past an abandoned farming village type thing which showed a lovely house, which makes you wonder how such a nice house can be left to be abandoned... we'd move there:

Being slightly frustrated at the lack of complete walk we decided a walk to a hopefully picturesque lake...lock might be in order. I managed to take a cool photo of the landscape:

Whilst Naomi managed to take a cool photo of the wildlife:

That night was a clear night not knowing how many more we'd have I decided a timelaps of our accomadation should be done:

The next day we took a trip to the north of the island as I was hoping to get in and amugst the amazing hills:

I feel I was quite successful, our afternoon saw us visit the coast where we visited a 'Cave of Gold' where we saw no Gold:

However there were quite cool rock formations meaning I simply had to take a photo:

on the way back we got told off by walking back the wrong way by some excessivly cross scotish man which kinda put a dampener on a nice day! That evening we chose to eat next to the outside fire:

Combined with nice company (wife), views and local ale being told off quickly disapeared into quite an amusing story! Next day we decided a visit to the fairy pools was in order, a number of people mentioned its worth visiting the fairy pools so we were pretty excited to see them:

Yeah they didn't fail to please! The weather for the day was forcast to be rain all day, however for the whole of the walk it was like a blue patch of the sky was following us, so couldn't really complain! The next day we went to what was called the caribbean on Skye... basically a nice beach ideal for when the weathers not listed as being great. It was a beach... we have many of them in Devon/Cornwall:

However for the afternoon the weather cleared up a tiny bit so we went to the area of the island which drew me to it to start with, it's iconic 'Old Man' basically its lord of the rings style landscape:

Yeah it looked epic! Prior to going to Skye I posted on the cycling forum I visit if there's any must do/see activities on Skye, the one which stood out for me was the boat ride and walk on Corsuik. So that's what we did on the next day. The guys at MistyIsle boat trips took the honour of boating.... shipping us... ferrying us over to the loch and even allowed us on even though we didn't have cash (taking our address) on the pretence we'd pay the local tourist office when we get cash out. The walk around the loch was highly rewarding except sadly the weather didn't play to taking any great photos but you get the general idea:

Tehe the photo above looks hilarious out of context, the slop was a little steeper than the photo puts on and we had a nice rest there but from the image it looks like I'm just sulking! For our final day on the island we went for a walk up to something called the prison and accidently picked up some hitch hikers on rout (flashed an oncoming car for them to drive through the gap, german hitch hikers saw this as a come on aboard sign and oh deer). The walk was once again highly scenic at one point the clouds lifted to give us an amazing view (one which will stay in my mind for a long time), sadly the photo doesn't do it justice just couldn't get an angle:

With this saw our exit from Skye our next day consisted of a walk up Ben Nevis where the camera stayed in the bag for two reasons, it was hammering it down and thus zero visability. Skye is well worth another trip in a couple years. Any questions about it please feel free to fire away the whole album should be listed on my Google+ account.