Scotland Bound

Blending in.

On Friday morning we got up, finished packing and were on our way up north by 10am.  The plan today - to head north and be in Dollar with the Blezards by 3pm.  The journey was pretty uneventful, except one detour to Ecclefechan.  We were making good time and as Matt loves Ecclefechan tarts, we thought we would investigate the town and see if we could purchase one from a bakery.  This was a bad idea: first of all, there was no bakery in the very small and deprived looking village and secondly we came across a tractor which was spraying lumps of mud across the road and we got hit big time.  Yuck!  Oh hum, we continued on to Moffat, where we stopped for lunch - very nice (and cheap) it was too - Cafe Ariete there is just great - Tom had a pint of strawberry milkshake which he polished off in no time, Matt had a roll with bacon, sausage and haggis and was very happy.  I went for the soup and sandwich option and was astounded by the size of the meal - it was enormous, I could hardly eat the soup let alone the sandwich as well - luckily Matt was on hand to help, but it meant he didn't get his slice of Ecclefechan Tart for pudding!

Eilean Donan Castle

We then headed further north to the Edinburgh / Glasgow corridor and travelled over the Forth Road Bridge to arrive in Dollar just on 3pm.  It was a horrible, horrible day - grey and rainy so we stayed in and ate home made biscuits and then a wonderful stew that the boys had made.  Tom had a ball playing with Rory and Lewis - there were a lot of high spirits, shouting, screaming etc.  Both boys have just got Gerbils, so Tom got to handle and play with them as well as a long session playing cops and robbers.  It was fun.  Once the boys had finally gone to bed we settled down to a session of cheese, biscuits, wine and whisky.  It was a good night.

MV Hebridean Isles

Saturday morning we were a little fragile!  Matt busted his hangover with a fried haggis roll for breakfast - I tried it...it wasn't for me, so I went for toast in jam instead.  I did have an unquenchable thirst all day though, didn't matter how much I drank.  In fact I even went to bed thirsty!  We left the Blezards at 8.30 - they were all heading down to London this morning so we got out of their hair.  It was a good job too, as we ended up having quite a day out.

We headed north and made good time, so much so that we were beginning to worry about getting to Skye too early!  We saw a sign for Dewar's World of Whisky and thought of going there, but the signs disappeared.  Then Matt saw a sign for House of Bruar - it said shopping and cafe, it was 9.30, we were both already hungry and thirsty again so we thought we would stop by and see if it was any good.  Wow!  Not sure how to describe it - a shopping venue maybe.  It had a huge food hall, with butchery, lots of smoked salmon, lots of posh nosh treats.  Then there was a cafe and restaurant where we fortified ourselves with cakes and drinks - they were very nice too.  Then there were shops - well one shop but more of a department store selling lots of very nice high end products.  Good thing though was there was a massive sale on - 50% and 25% off lots of things, we ended up spending quite a lot of time and money there.  There was a country gentleman's outfitters and ditto for ladies.  All very nice and a little too posh for us.  A good job we had a boat to catch otherwise we may have spent all day there and may have crumbled and ended up buying country clothing for all 3 of us.  Anyway, if anyone is ever passing it is worth a look.

By now it was past 11, but we decided to start traveling again, after a brief stop at Dalwhinnie Distillery (Matt surprisingly didn't buy anything) we headed on again through some beautiful beautiful scenery - mountains and lochs, including one called Loch Lochy, until we got to Roybridge and found lunch at Darwin's Rest - a fossil themed cafe - very well done and nice food if a little slow.  I had the first smoked salmon of the holiday and believe it or not Tom rejected my offer to try some?!

Harris-bound

Next (brief) stop was Eilean Donan Castle for a photo shoot - it looked amazing even in the gloom.  We then headed to Kyle of Lochalsh and the bridge across to the Isle of Skye.  We headed straight to Portree and the Co-op there to get some provisions in (nothing is open in the Western Isles on a Sunday including restaurants, cafes and take-aways, so if we wanted to eat on Sunday we needed to take food with us)  By the time we had stocked up, it was getting on for 5pm, so we decided to head straight to Uig to the ferry terminal.  Shame as I know Portree is a good looking place.  We checked in at the ferry terminal, had a look around Uig (not much to see) and waited for our ferry to arrive.  The M V Hebridean Isles arrived dead on time and we were the first on board.  We went straight to the cafeteria as it was getting on for 7pm.  Tom had a scottish favourite of Macaroni Cheese which he inhaled in no time whilst Matt and I had curries.

The journey across was nice and calm, although a little cold and murky!  The visibility wasn't great, it was rainy and windy, but we did manage to see some of the scenery as we headed past it all.  We arrived in Tarbert in Harris dead on time and headed straight to our cottage. It was a 50 mile drive, but the easiest 50 miles you could drive, big open, empty, smooth roads in a barren landscape.  The only thing slowing us down was the speed limit.  Thing to note - all road signs etc here are in Gaelic first and English second, if there is room.

Summer in the Outer Hebrides

We found our cottage in Bac - a very comfortable croft conversion, full of nice touches including smoked salmon and black pudding in the fridge!  Tom went to bed very excited and was asleep in seconds.  We weren't far behind him, it had been a long day.