Day 5 - The Great Scottish Tour

Isle of Skye to Inverness

As with all our trip we wanted to pack as much in the day as we possibly could, which is part of the reason we start our days as soon as the sun comes up (and as we’ve mentioned before, to avoid large crowds of tourists).

This day, maybe we should have waited an hour or two.

Let’s put the pieces of the puzzle together: Scottish Highlands, Scottish mist, narrow roads, 

 people driving white vehicles that seemingly popped out of nowhere.

Looking back it was a great adventure, but at the time…it wasn’t the most pleasant ride we’ve ever had. Actually it was so unpleasant that it warranted its own rest break.

 Eventually the fog lifted and the morning turned bright and sunny and we were back on the road.

This morning took us to Tornapress and along the Bealach na Ba pass (Path of the Cows, in case your Gaelic fails you), toward Applecross. Several months earlier we’d run into a Scottish couple at our go-to bar before a Wild hockey game and they insisted we had to go to Applecross. The drive (ride, in our case) they said, was quintessential Highlands.

They were right. Once the fog lifted, everything around us looked like…Scotland.

We made our way back to the coast and enjoyed the beautiful ride to Kinlochewe through Inverness and on through Cairngorns National Park to Balmoral, the British Royal Family’s summer home.

Most of Balmoral isn’t open to the public, actually only one great hall is, when the Royals aren’t in residence.

We walked the grounds and learned an amazing amount of information about the castle, stables, garden and the Royals in general.

We took our time riding back to Inverness, along the Whiskey Road which goes along the River Spey. Apparently, you are not drinking real Scotch Whiskey unless the water used to make it came from the Spey. 

It makes sense then, that so many distilleries lined the river and we had to chuckle at the amount of tour buses making the Whiskey Pilgrimage. 

Oh, and this is the one time it rained while we were on the road. For about 10 minutes.

 Once we got to Inverness, we found the Dionard Guest House where we were staying.

It’s always interesting to plan a trip and then get to see the real thing, and see how much it matches the image you created in your mind. Inverness was exactly like I imaged it would be.

Our hostess at the Inn had made dinner reservations for us at a local, popular pub so we cleaned up, and walked the few blocks downtown.

Dinner was to be at Johnny Foxes, where Sean was convinced to try haggis for the first time.

Side note: I’ve never understood why people are so weary of haggis: meat and grains and spices encased in sheep stomach or intestines. Yes, it sounds rather disgusting, but it’s really not any different than eating our sausage in ‘natural casing’.

It was Saturday night in Inverness and the locals were out in full force. Apparently there had been several weddings that day, so there were a lot of people dressed in Scottish garb.

These weren’t the first men in kilts that we’d seen, but marveled at the ease in which they moved and how comfortable they were in their native dress (no pun intended).

After dinner, we walked up to Inverness Castle

 to get a view of the city,

then stopped in at a few pubs. It had been an exhausting day and the next day was going to be a long, gut-wrenching one too, so we called it a night and made our way back to the inn.