Scottish Adventures: isle of skye obsessed.

So this weekend, I went on a trip to the Isle of Skye with the ISC.

and fell in love with everything about it.

maybe it was all the sunshine, but there's definitely something special about that island.

I guess we should start at the very beginning so you can get the whole story/adventure weekend. We left in two coaches [that's a charter bus] at 6:30. There were 100 or so of us going and each bus had their own tour guide from Haggis Adventures. The whole weekend was spent traveling and such with our one bus gang, so we never saw the other 50 people again. Haha. Our guide was Scot. Please tell me someone else catches the hilarity of that. He was only a couple years older than me and quite a hoot. It was also his first guided tour, which I honestly didn't even think about really until he mentioned it at the very end of the trip. He wore a kilt and played the accordion, but more on that later. The journey was apparently supposed to be 4 hours. But we were in a large bus, so that obviously was false. A good 3 hours of the trip consisted of horrifically windy roads. And it was dark the whole way there so we couldn't enjoy the scenery, but that wasn't a big deal as we'd get to see the good stuff over the next two days. Elizabeth, Maddie, and I sat in the very back of the bus, thus I imagine the twists and turns were a bit worse. I think everyone was kinda feeling not so great by the time we made it to this town called Fort William, where we took a mandatory 45 min stop for the bus driver. Scot apparently worked at some pub/club place there so we all got to go there and hang out for that time. Then it was back on the bus for like another hour or so until we finally made it to Kyleakin, the tiny village where our hostel was. By that time it was around 1am so we pretty much just got off the bus and got to our room and fell asleep. The hostel seemed like it was an old home converted to hostel because there were a bunch of rooms and ours was on the top floor, with just the 3 of us friends in it. There were I think 2 caravans in the backyard where bigger groups of people stayed. But all the rooms inside the hostel were 2-5? people in each.

We had to be ready to go by 10:30 the next morning [again mandatory ~9 hours of sleep for the bus driver...must be a UK thing? or a tour thing?] so we got a fairly good night's rest. The beds were quite comfortable and the pillows were soo much nicer than the one I have in my dorm room. How can hostels have better beds and pillows than a university? Breakfast was heavy on the carbs: we were allowed to have 2 pieces of toast, 1 scone, and a bowl of cereal along with whatever juice/milk/water to drink. The scone was really tasty and they had peanut butter so I had that on my toast! Once we were all gathered up on the bus, we were off. Actually we first took a short walk to the pier to hear a wee story about Saucy Mary and see Castle Moil where she lived. There's no way I can re-tell every story I heard on this trip because Scot was full of them. Or maybe Scotland is just full of them. I actually enjoyed history for once! Ha. Saucy Mary has a pub named after her in Kyleakin, if that's anything. She basically got money from sailors by blocking this channel that they had to go through or else they would have to travel much longer all the way around Skye and as a thank you, she flashed them. Saucy Mary. Yep. After that, we got on the buses and drove north. The first stop was at this waterfall...I think it was called Mouth Waterfall? That's probably completely wrong; I probably just couldn't understand Scot's Scottish accent or the name was in Gaelic. It was situated in a peet bog, which was not really surprising, as a lot of Skye is boggy. That means the ground was wet, muddy, and squishy. I am so thankful for my sweet waterproof shoes. I still tried to avoid the worst boggy areas to get closer to the falls, but at one point one of my shoes completely went under bog and I didn't get wet! Awesome. Good to know they really work, too! We got back on the bus and drove a little more to this river that separates the north and south of Skye, as well as back in the day, the rival clans of McDonald and McLeod. It was called the Sligachan River. Don't ask how to pronounce that because I can't remember. At this stop, things got interactive as Scot told us the story about how the McDonalds and McLeods tried to solve their rivalry by marrying their son and daughter, respectively. It would've been great, minus a mishap at the river. The girl was riding her horse across the river with her dog and pageboy. The horse trips and the poor girl is sent head first into the river and knocks her face on a rock, ripping her eye out of the socket. Ew. What was she to do? They hurry back to their clan and are like what do we do?! She ends up just wearing a veil so that the man she's about to marry won't see her, since he had never before...it would be alright. Only once they got married, the veil is lifted and the guy freaks! Thinking it is a trick, the McLeods send the girl packing and carve out the eye of the horse, dog, and pageboy as a little payback. When the girl makes it to the river again, she sits down on a rock and cries her eyes out [eye?]. She then hears a little voice below her, asking her why she's crying. It's the king of the faeries. Normally mean little tricksters, the faery feels awful for the poor girl and vows to do some good. So he says, "I can make you eternally beautiful. See this river is blessed. If you dip your face in it for 7 seconds, you'll be forever beautiful." Of course, she takes him up on this offer and whooooeee, she comes out gorgeous. STUNNING. And remember the horse, dog, and pageboy? Well they do it too, coming out a stallion, a beautiful dog, and a lovely little boy! HA. Sucks to be you, McLeod clan. So the whole time, Scot is telling this story, he recruited people to be the girl, horse, and guy. It was hilarious to watch. Then he had the girl stick her face in the river and asked if any of the rest of us wanted to. I would've, but the water was frigid and no one else was jumping to do it all at once. Only one other guy took him up on his offer. He was a red head so jokes all around that he still had red hair but now had a soul after doing it. Haha. I think after this we went and saw another waterfall and then we stopped for lunch and exploring at this town called Portree, the 'capital' of Skye. It's the largest town in the Skye and home to the only secondary school on the island. What?! Legit. It was really cute and pretty. Also, home to a cheap, tasty bakery. I got a chocolate cake thing for 61p. Noms.

Realizing this is going to turn into the world's longest post if I try to fit all of Saturday's adventures in this so, I'll leave it at that and continue in another post. More than likely, there's gonna be like 5 posts about Isle of Skye. It's all really good stuff and I'm obviously going to include photos so get ready. It's too late to write another post tonight, so maybe tomorrow. In the mean time, pictures to go along with Saturday-up till lunch break. =) Also, complete sidenote, but I was just listening to "Caledonia" on repeat whilst writing this post. Dougie MacLean version. Youtube it.