Day Eight: Birthday Amongst the Fairies and Castles

Whew! We started the day off early (as usual!) and checked out of the hotel at 7 am, driving straight to see the Old Man of Storr again. It was a misty, cloudy morning and we got some shots of the view but didn’t get any more good shots of the Old Man.

Next was a hike to the Fairy Pools in the southern part of the island, and we drove about half an hour to get to the trail. The walk only took about 20 cold, misty, windy minutes but the pools were amazing!

After warming up in the car we began our drive away from Skye, deep into the highlands on our way to Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness. It was a lot of country driving and about 1.5 hours into it we stopped for lunch at a little cafe called Tarvie’s for a burger and chips (Dad is a big fan of the beef in Scotland!).

We got back on the road and after another hour we got to Urquhart Castle. The castle is VERY old, the first structure on the site was built around 500 AD. We walked around the site and got a good look at Loch Ness. Zero monsters spotted, but it’s more than 700 feet deep! Crazy.

I also got a shot of the bird that keeps chirping at us out of sight. It was glaring angrily at us from a traffic cone as we were leaving Urquhart.

After touring the castle ruins we popped back onto the road for a tour of the half a million roundabouts of Inverness. Seriously. So many. We got to the Royston Guest House a little after 3 and got settled in. After a brief rest we decided to walk into Inverness and get dinner. We walked along the river for a while and took some pictures.

Dad and I were both shocked to find out that Inverness has a population of less than 50k people…

We headed to a restaurant called Prime for dinner and I was able to find my favorite Scotch cider, Thistly Cross. After a very good dinner we walked back and crashed for the night.