Same Shirt, Different day-2012 Adventures of the "Devonport Wonder Babes"

Friday 6^th July

Had a good 2 ½ hr drive from Kennacraig to Fort William last evening through some very beautiful scenery along the lochs and through glens on west coast and through some torrential showers. Back through Tarbet, Lochgilpead and Oban which was a much larger town than I had imagined. Got a little bit lost actually finding the YHA Glen Nevis despite the fact that we had stayed there in 2009. In a 4 bed bunkroom with 2 other nice young women, one from Australia (who had been Learning French in Paris) and the other Russian ( who had been at an English language course in Essex).

Fine but a bit cloudy this morning. Shopping stop at Morrisons before heading west again towards Skye. The drive through the lochs and glens again was spectacular. Took the route across the bride rather than the ferry, brief stop at Broadmore and arrived in Uig in the north of Skye at the hostel about 1 pm. Closed until 5 pm but sat outdoors on bench and had lunch looking at the amazing view across the bay and watching the CalMac ferry leave for Harris. A visit there  will have to be another adventure another time.

After lunch headed further north on a road that goes right around the top of the north coast and back down to Portree which is halfway up the island. But only went about 10 km and spent rest of the afternoon there until about 6 pm at 3 fascinating places.

The first was an Iron Age “Souterrain” out in the middle of a farmer’s field which had been completely excavated and which you could go into. It had been discovered in the 1990’s when the farmer fell through one of the lintels. It was just off to the side of the remains of at least 3 roundhouse buildings probably home to a small family and the archaeologists had speculated that the underground structure was a storage area for dairy and other perishable food products, an ancient root cellar. It was 17 metres long, only 1.5 metres high at the highest (and the entrance was only about 1 m so even I had to bend right down to enter) and only 0.75 m wide. Unfortunately there was quite a long deepish puddle on the floor about 2 m in from entrance so I didn’t go any further. But pretty remarkable experience to be able to go inside this, since most of these structures especially those in good repair you are not allowed near.

It was then a short drive (all of this road looks over sea and rugged coastline) along to the Museum of Sky Island Life which is housed in a number of stone buildings with thatched roofs. 3 of the building are original croft buildings about 200 years old that were lived/worked in by members of the same family until 1957 and are furnished just as they would have been right down to the box of dried peat for the fire. The other 3 had been derelict on the site and were rebuilt to reflect their original functions in the 1980’s. Heaps of interesting material in there, people have gone to a lot of trouble to explain how life was for these people.

The last place we visited was the cemetery just up the hill where Flora McDonald is buried. She was the woman who smuggled Bonnie Prince Charlie to Skye after the defeat at Culloden. According to the info here, when she died some 40 years after this event, 3,000 people attended her funeral and her original tombstone was eventually destroyed as so many people took a piece as a memento of her.

 Interesting, well tended cemetery, still in use, with a more recent famous occupant being Alexander McQueen, the fashion designer, who has a fairly flamboyant headstone. Who knew.

Back to YHA and lots of people there, bit of a crush in kitchen. Spent some time talking and drinking local beer with young man called Jonty from Nelson who is working at the Isle of Skye brewery just down the hill by the ferry terminal.

In our 8 bedded room we have 2 about 40ish women cycling around Skye and another young asian woman. Quite a few families here arriving in station wagons with bikes on back and kayaks on roof racks

 Comfortable warm beds and great hot showers. SYHA has installed these electric instant water heaters in the showers in all the hostels and they are great as are the big water boilers in the kitchens. This hostel at Uig is quite modern and clean and well looked after. 

Just a word on the roads both on Islay and Skye. Many of the roads are one way only and they have a system of passing bays and the convention seems to be if the bay is on your left you pull over even if you have to reverse. On Skye the road and bays (so far) have all been sealed and the bays are evident far ahead. On Islay many of the roads were unsealed or had been sealed some time ago and there is much more vegetation close to the road. There were lots of black and white painted poles beside the road and it took me until the last day we were there to work out that they marked the parking bays so you could see them ahead.      

Breaking In to Helens Blog!  Lyndsay here. A word of praise for Youth Hostels! Because we are on the road for 6 months finances dictated we stay in affordable lodgings. Without doubt YHA UK and Scotland have raised their game. Especially in the remote hostels. We have stayed in delightful places that Helen has described but you might know I enjoy getting into the kitchen ! All the hostels have great CLEAN well ordered kitchens and I have cooked alongside women from Iceland, China, Germany Russia, Czech republic, Scotland and a bloke from  Nelson!! All this week. Doing the dishes this morning looking down the Uig harbour was pretty amazing. On to Glasgow Sunday

Amazing Uig sunset  seen from YHA