Today we anchored off the town of Portree, the capital and largest town on the Isle of Skye which is in the Inner Hebrides islands. How’s that for a lot of geography? It’s a picturesque harbor with the town at one end and the rest surrounded by cliffs. If anyone saw the movie Made of Honor there was a scene showing a sweeping view of the main street.
I started my day going shopping with the chef. The group gathered around 9:30 AM and tendered ashore. I didn’t know that to get into the main part of the town we had to hike up a street which felt like I was climbing Kilimanjaro. It nearly did me in! When we finally made it up there and I caught my breath, we walked around the streets and we passed some shops that looked interesting. The chef had specific things he was looking for (salmon, haggis, blood sausage) and he didn’t really know where to look for them so he stopped and had a chat with a local for directions. From the conversation I heard it sounded like finding shops that sold what he wanted would be difficult. I decided that I would leave the expedition and check out the shops that I’d passed. I let the ship’s personnel accompanying the chef I was leaving and set out on my own.
My first stop was an artisan knit shop. They had the most beautiful wraps and throws out of super fine wool. I shouldn’t have, but I bought a wrap because it had the most beautiful colors. Now I just need to figure out how to wear it. I walked into a toy and bookstore thinking perhaps I could find some uniquely Scottish toy for my grandson. Toys must be universal because I didn’t see anything new, not even a Lego model of the Loch Ness monster. The one thing I did see though were a few books written in Gaelic. In retrospect I should have bought one even if I couldn’t read it. After I’d checked out the stores along the street I walked back down the hill, which was nearly as bad as going up, and took the tender back to the ship.
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| The main square |
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| Principal shopping street |
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| I just liked the name of this store "Tippecanoe Gallery & Gifts |
In the afternoon, I went back ashore, this time to meet my bus to go on a tour to Dunvegan Castle and to see the Scottish Highlands. Our guide was an older gentleman with a white beard dressed in a kilt and the appropriate socks and shoes and with a lovely Scottish accent. I think he said his name was Callum. We had 23 people on our bus and when we were all there we set out. Going up the hill was much better this time.
We headed out of town on our way to Donvegan, a castle belonging to the Macleod clan. Along the way we passed not very much arable land; instead there were fields with rushes and some kind of grasses and lots of sheep grazing in them. The road was lined with gorse bushes which have a bright yellow flower that Callum told us bloom nearly all year long.
As we rode along our guide told us some of the history of the island and Scotland in general. There is a long history of Scots and English fighting, and though he didn’t say it, I got the definite impression that the Scots are still not overly enamored with the English. When the last Stuart monarch of Great Britain Queen Anne, died in the early 18th century there were many Scottish clans that supported Bonny Prince Charles. His efforts to take the throne failed and the Scots suffered a disastrous defeat at the battle of Culloden.
More interesting to me was one of the tales he told about a feud between two clans on the Isle of Skye. I think these stories are a little like some of the Irish ones, based a little in fact but embellished for the sake of a good story. There were two clans on the island, the MacDonalds and the Macleods. Seven or eight hundred years ago there was a custom that a man and a woman could become betrothed and live together for one year and a day before getting married. At the end of that time they could marry or either party could end the relationship, a sort of no-fault divorce. It seems there was a lovely Macleod girl who was sent with great fanfare on a beautiful horse with a retinue of servants all richly dressed to be betrothed and live with a MacDonald man. In the year that followed somehow the young woman lost an eye. At the end of the year the MacDonald sent her back to her family riding on a one-eyed donkey, accompanied only by a one-eyed servant and dressed in rags. So began the feud between the two clans. If I remember what he said correctly, at some point in the mid 20th century a MacDonald was trying to be appointed to some kind of council on which a Macleod already sat. The latter said that “absolutely no” the MacDonald could not be appointed and that ended that.
We arrived at Donvegan, a Macleod castle situated on a rock next to a loch. There is a lovely garden in which the rhododendrons were blooming. The castle was originally built in the 13th century and added on to in the following centuries. In the 19th century it was remodeled to look medieval. It’s the only castle in the Hebrides islands which has been continuously occupied by the same family for 800 years. There are a few rooms that you can visit and of course the gardens.
After our visit we headed back to Portree on a different road and as it turned out, the guide and driver shouldn’t have done that. We were riding along looking at the rolling hills, lochs and mountains in the diatance with lots of sheep everywhere when we came to a halt. There was an accident involving a truck and a car up ahead. The road is two lane but there is no room to pass nor any possibility to turn around, especially in a bus. So we sat in a tremendous line of traffic until eventually a tow truck was able to get there and the mess could be cleared. It didn’t look like anyone was killed which was good, but it certainly tied up everything. We sat for an hour and a half and were late getting back to the ship which in turn made the ship late to leave. These are some photos of the country we passed. You can see it turned out to be a gorgeous day.
While we sat I asked our guide who owned the land we were passing with all the sheep grazing. He told me that there are mainly large landowners who leased houses and in times gone by plots of land to tenant farmers. So at that time much of the land was planted in crops. At some point the landowners realized they could make more money raising sheep so they wouldn’t renew leases on farmland and eventually they stopped leasing the houses too. That began to force many of those tenants off the land and started a migration of many Scots to the US and to places like New Zealand and Australia. I’ve gotten the distinct impression that these absentee landowners were not particularly nice people.
Anyway, we got back to the ship and we didn’t have far to go so nothing was lost. I am getting very tired with this port a day business. Tomorrow we are in a little fishing village called Scrabster. I booked a tour that lasts nearly all day mainly because I wanted to see the Scottish Highlands. I saw a lot of them today so I’m thinking seriously of calling it a day of rest instead. It will be Sunday after all.
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