Scottish Highlands to Skye day. On paper it is a three hour drive from Inverness. It took us considerably longer, because we could not stop stopping.
The A82 down the side of Loch Ness is the start of it. We pulled over once to look north up the loch and again to look south, and both times it was worth the hazard lights. Then the road climbs away from the water and joins up with the A87, through Glen Moriston, and after that it is just one enormous view after another. Loch Cluanie sitting in its bowl with the shoreline drawn down and the mountains stacked up behind. The long empty run of Glen Shiel with a river braiding across the flat. The Five Sisters of Kintail on the right, one after another, filling the whole side of the windscreen. We stopped at least half a dozen times. At some of them we forgot to get the camera out at all and just stood there. At others it was too windy to put the drone up. I have driven this road before and it still flattened me.
Over the bridge to Skye, and rather than stop at Sligachan we pushed straight on to Portree to get set up. Sligachan can wait, we have three days.
Portree Campsite gave us the back corner of the site, up near where the manager lives, which is exactly where you want to be. Quiet, sheep grazing on the other side of the fence, and a long view back down toward the town. It is more a camping park than a caravan park, far more tents than motorhomes, and it is very obviously a base for hikers. Backpackers and overlanders and people from everywhere, all here to have a crack at Skye.
Which is not a small thing. Skye Mountain Rescue Team helped twenty people in difficulty in a single day last week, across multiple separate incidents on the Skye Trail, callouts running from seven in the morning until eight at night with some of them overlapping. One of the busiest days in the team's history. The Skye Trail is a 79 mile unofficial and unmarked route taking in the Trotternish Ridge and the Cuillin, and the team's own point afterwards was that the weather had been forecast, and that people underestimate the terrain, the timing, and how much they are relying on their phone for navigation. They are 35 volunteers. Worth remembering while you are admiring the hills from a warm van.
The park itself has no playground, no shop, no cafe, no anything really. What it does have is a free laundry and a free kitchen with power points and a drying room, and of the five parks we have stayed at it is the only one that charged nothing for facilities. The result is that the common room becomes the social hub of the entire site, full of hikers charging devices and draping boots and jackets over the drying racks, which also means finding a free washer or dryer is a competitive sport. Fair trade.
And the manager was the best of any park we have stayed at, by a distance. An absolute barrel of laughs. We ended up having more than one long chat with her purely because she was good company.
Then a Co-op run in Portree for four days of supplies, and a wander around the town. The harbour with its row of painted houses is as good as everyone says, even under grey cloud.
Back at the van the girls got their schoolwork out. Katherine has a geography research task built around the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, complete with a photo scavenger hunt she has been ticking off across three countries. Mirin has been keeping her own journal, and her list of best things currently reads Ireland, kittens, castles, horses, Scotland, Highland cow, Harry Potter World. Hard to argue with any of it.
Trotternish Peninsula tomorrow, which looks to be the most epic day yet.
