Skye, Skye, Oh my, Oh my

Check this out guys, I'm finally going to update about my long weekend trip to the Isle of Skye. Aren't you all excited? At the edge of your seat yet? Ok anyway we were originally planning on leaving Friday afternoon and returning on Tuesday, but because of car issues, my friend Thom, who planned the whole thing had to postpone our leaving and said he would call me around lunch time the next day. Oh and Liz had come to Edinburgh the day before and came too. So the next day we set our alarms for early because Liz wanted to wander around Edinburgh a bit before we left for Skye. So I wake up to hear the door buzzing and then my flatmate H bangs on my door and asks if I am there and I mumble that I am and Thom is at the door, and it is 12pm. Good fun anyway so we make plans to leave in about an hour and so we head over to his flat at about that time and we find out that Josiah couldn't make it because of a paper he had to write and that Thom's friend from his course is coming too. So we pile in the car and head over to ASDA (British Wal Mart) to get food and then hit the road. We pass through Inverness and stop at Loch Ness, but it was dark by this time so here are some pictures of us at Loch Ness at night.


Then we stopped at this hotel with a car pa and a nice restaurant for dinnerwhere I had some very tasty fish and chips and there was a really cool spinny-thingy(very technical term) with all the sauces in it.. see if you can guess where the ketchup is!
After a bit more driving, we crossed the bridge over to Skye and once we were into the rural area of Skye we see some wooly cows, so we decided to stop and take pictures, but they keep wandering away from us and I go to pet one of them.. I mean it is a fuzzy cow, I couldn't help but want to pet it, and it very quickly gets up and bolts.

So then we make it to the little village that we are planning to hike out of at about 10pm and decide to sleep in the car. Apparently I was mumbling in my sleep. We woke up around 9 to an extremely gorgeous day and saw this guy spying at us.

Then we head out.. don't we look just rearing to go?
Butwe don't really follow any kind of trail or anything we just wander through sheep grazing land and over fences. There were alot of sheep (there are more sheep in Scotland than people..significantly) and alot of heather.. it was so awesome. So then around lunch time we find this bothie which is basically an old house that is used by people for camping and such and so we decided to stay there for the night. And in order to make use of the clear day, we decide to climb a mountock (not big enough to be a mountain, not small enought to be a hill, so like a hillock is a small hill, a mountock is a small mountain). Not exactly my favorite activity but it wasn't too bad until the guys decide, hey let's climb this shear rock face and Liz decides to try it too, it scared the crap out of me... but I did make it, here are some pictures, but you can't really see below it.
So we then make it to what looks like the top, but pshyc, it's not. So Liz and I decide that it is the top for us, about 900 m up out of 920 or so. It was nice to sit and admire the pretty scenery.. here is a picture of me at the "top".
Then we make our way back down but down the side with more scary cliffs so at one point we had to go back the other way because I couldn't go any farther and then we found the nice not so steep path and back to the bothie where we have dinner and then we are all exhausted by 8pm so we go to sleep on hard wooden slabs.. not nice the the hips. So the next day, we wake up at 9.. that's right 11 hours. And the plan is to take this 12 mile hike in a circle around the nearby mountocks and there is one spot on this trek called a "drop step" where you have to grab a rock face and shuffle sideways to pass. So Liz and I decided to take a look at it and if it looked too difficult we would go back and wander around the nearby loch(all lakes in Scotland are called lochs). But it ended up being more of a scale up this small rocky trail so we went up and then realized we couldn't make it back down and because I am a slow hiker (my leg was sore from the mountock extravaganza) we wouldn't make it back to the bothie by dark, so we then decide to climb over the mountocks because it will be shorter. That was rather tiring, but what was worse was going down the mountock in the other side and because I had a huge rip on the inner side of my trousers, my other foot would get caught in it and I would roll down the mountock a few yards. Did I mention that it was raining the entire time and we were completely soaked. So we make it down to the loch which is in the same valley as the bothie and the boys go ahead to start the fire and dinner and Liz and I will get there eventually. I was in such a zombie state by this time and the loch was so much longer than it looked like from the mountock on the previous day. Liz also wanders about in the wrong direction a bit and we finally make it back, but not before trudging through a marsh also, in which the guys found themselves waist deep...crazy. Thankfully, I only made it calf deep because I stayed closer to the stream for longer otherwise they would have had to send out a rescue party. So we ate dinner and were exhausted, but decided that we needed to stay up to at least 8pm, so we played I spy in front of the fire and all of our wet clothes that were supposed to be drying but didn't. Then the next day we again wake up about 9 and head out at about 10, but this time taking the path The weather was really weird that day, it was clear, then it would spit and then it hailed and then it was clear and there was a rainbow and then it rained again...like the weather just couldn't make up its mind. So we eventually made it back to the car all muddy and soaked through.. then used the loo next to the car park and the set of clean clothes kept in the car and left Skye around 1. We then stopped at the same little hotel for lunch and the people recognized us there and we had some really nice soup. We also stopped at Urquhart Castle which is on Loch Ness... we had much difficulty getting into this position. Much. And back up.


We then drove a good deal more with one other stop for petrol and were getting rather ansy to get home at 7:30 pm when we were about 15 miles outside of Perth or about an hour away from Edinburgh. So then Andrew threw something at me and I was searching for it to retaliate and then BAM! The side airbags came out and my ear was ringing..we had hit a deer. So we stopped, everyone was alright and the boys went out and moved the deer off the road and we drove the car very slowly to an area with a shoulder and called the police in Perth, here is a picture of the damage.


So the police came about 30 minutes later and basically said that they can't let us drive and took a while to find a tow truck company that would come pick us up. They finally reached one and then we had to wait another 40 minutes for the truck to arrive. It finally came and here is a picture of Liz and I in the backseat with all our bags. So the tow truck took us to the trainstation in Perth and Thom ran in to see if there was a train to Edinburgh, mind you this is about 10pm, and the only trains were going to Glasgow except for one going to London, so Thom asked a lady nearby if the one going to London went through Edinburgh, she told him that it didn't but that if he was going to Edinburgh she could give him a ride, he then told her that there were four of us and we had big bags and she said that would be fine as long as we didn't mind squishing, so we got a ride from Perth to Edinburgh, right outside Thom's flat and she turned out to be the manager of housing for the area that Thom is from.. but all other conversation I can't remember because I fell asleep, hopefully I didn't mumble too much that time. And so we finally made it back to my flat at about midnight... completly knackered (British for exhausted). And that was our trip to Skye, phew I had to take a break in the middle of that post... so long, but pretty awesome story eh? Aren't you glad you waited around for it?