Narrow

I mentioned that the trip from Islay to Skye was pretty harrowing, but you may be wondering what exactly I meant by that. Well, we narrowly avoided being killed with boredom as we waited for more than two hours for our ferry in Port Askaig. The ferry trip was mostly uneventful, although it was delayed in leaving, so we didn't get to the mainland until later than we expected. I thought our drive up the west coast to Skye would then take about 4-5 hours, depending on how many stops we made.

What I didn't know is that the A85 and the A87, two (supposedly) major roads in Scotland are n.a.r.r.o.w. Like, narrower than the word I just stretched out using periods. I'm talking country lane narrow. Add in the fact that they were also crazy curvy, ess curve after ess curve, pretty much non-stop. So top speed was, what? Maybe 40 mph? Then it started getting dark. Then random animals kept jumping out at us - a HUGE buck scared the living daylights out of me, but luckily stayed on the shoulder, and an owl or some other fairly large bird that actually flew into the car as we were driving. And I had decided to take a turn at the wheel, so I was the one driving (shhh. . .don't tell DSH, but I'm *much* better at it than him!). The driving portion of the trip ended up taking nearly seven hours (including our pit stop for dinner) and by the time we got to the b&b (at 1am, our poor, poor host!), my neck and shoulder muscles were in a gross, twisted bundle.


Skye was pretty and we had good weather again. Go check out the pictures for some amazing scenery (oh, and maybe another distillery shot or two, also).

For the two days between Skye and our return to Edinburgh, we didn't have an itinerary. We figured we'd kind of wing that part and see where it took us. Fortunately for us, we narrowly missed staying in Inverness (gateway to Loch Ness) which would have been a mistake. It's not a particularly good looking part of Scotland, or maybe we're just spoiled by the loveliness of Islay and Skye, and it didn't seem like there was a whole lot to do there. So we kept going until we got to Pitlochry. 


Pitlochry had more charm in half a block than Inverness had in its entirety. Plus, it had the added bonus of being less than three miles from the smallest distillery in Scotland, Edradour. :-) We checked in to a b&b - our biggest, nicest room yet - and then headed out for some walking, exploring, and the hunt for dinner.


Which (finally) brings us to today. We're in Perth until tomorrow when we head back to Edinburgh for the last days in Scotland.


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Completely unrelated to anything, but funny enough (I thought) to warrant a mention: Breakfasts with DSH have been, let's say, interesting. The traditional Scottish breakfast consists of all or a combination of the following - a fried egg, black pudding (made from blood, oats, and seasonings, it actually tastes a lot better than it sounds), sausage and/or bacon (it's more like Canadian bacon), grilled tomatoes, grilled mushrooms, and a potato scone. What makes it interesting is that DSH hates fried eggs and grilled tomatoes, but he always at least attempts to eat them because he doesn't want to be rude to the b&b host. This means that he fast chews his way through it and you can tell he's trying really hard not to taste anything. Because I wouldn't be me if I just let this go, I of course teased him about it. It was all well and good until he made a comment about the black pudding being like a scab. Ewwwwww. He got his revenge, but I really haven't been able to eat black pudding since then.