Part 1: Five Views of the Isle of Skye

 My problem is that I take too many pictures. It's almost paralyzing: I visited the Isle of Skye last week with my family and friends, and ended up with over 400 pictures. After culling out the ones that were awful, blurry, or where I didn't even remember where I took the picture, I still had more than 300 (with some contributions from Paul as well, one of the best is above). I want to share them all with you, but I fear even the most patient and interested of blog readers will not endure 300 photos. I'd probably crash Picasa and Blogger, too. So I do what I do when I have too much research data: I categorize. For our trip to the Isle of Skye, I ended up with ten categories for which I will pick the best two or three photos in each category to exemplify our trip. In this post, I show the first five categories. Wish me luck.

1. Driving Around
As its name suggests, Skye is an island. However we did not realize how massive an island it is until we got there.  Just to see various sights (and we didn't even traverse from one end of the island to the other) we put over 200 miles on the car in just over three days.

Paul and Gavin consult the map on the north end of Skye

Claire mugs for the camera on a beach near Staffin

Kilt Rock waterfall on the north end of Skye

 2. Uig and Borve
To get to the place where we stayed (the wigwam, next) you had to drive almost to to the top of the Isle of Skye. This meant driving to Portree, the largest northern city, and then continuing to drive on to Uig, a small town whose claim to fame is that the ferry departs there to go to the Outer Hebridean islands of Lewis and Harris. Next to Uig is Borve, whose claim to fame is standing stones, but Paul was less than impressed.

Uig harbor

Standing stones of Borve

3. Our wigwam
Those of you who know me will know that camping and I do not go together. I am much more of a "glamping" type. Previously in Scotland (at Gairloch) we stayed in a wigwam (think:yurt), but this time, we stayed in the "En suite wigwam" - meaning that in addition to a platform bed, a heater, and a kettle, this wigwam had a toilet, a shower, and a mini-kitchen. The lap of wigwam luxury. The view was great as well!

Our home away from home in Skye

View from the front of the Whitewave property

4. The Quiraing Hike
Before leaving for Skye, I did a little research on likely activities, and found the Quiraing. After printing out the information about it, including a small topographical map, I wrote on the printout, "2 km walk starting from a parking lot in the middle of nowhere." It actually didn't turn out to be that bad - we found the parking lot fairly easily, and there were plenty of other hikers to follow up the hill.  There were multiple ways to approach the rock formations - we stuck with the fairly easy bit (except for that really steep part where there was almost a mutiny among the under-8's) up to the Prison, with a view of the Needle, skipping the Table entirely.

Paul, Claire, and the Loves, with the Prison in the background

The wonderful Loves at the top of the hill, with the Needle in the background

View out to the sea from the Prison

 5. The Fairy Glen, Uig
This was the closest attraction to where we were staying and it was definitely Audrey's favorite place on the island.  Initially, she was sad that she didn't actually see fairies here, until we explained to her that seeing fairies was mostly an act of imagination.  Then she got into it and started to tell us about the fairies she had seen here and elsewhere. We made two visits to the Fairy Glen, once with the Loves and once more when sunshine threatened to break through on our last evening in Skye.

We started out by the lochlet, then climbed a hill

Through some picturesque and fairy-ish trees

To take the path up to the highest point

Where you could look down to fairy circles, with gifts left for the fairies in the center

And a beautiful view of the lochlet and hills below

I hope I've piqued your interest in the beautiful Isle of Skye - still to come, Portree, the Fairy Pools, the ill-fated hike, Dunvegan Castle, and getting there and back again!