Scotland - Day 2

After being chased indoors in Inverness from some midnight caching by the only rain of the trip, it was up bright and early for some caches and photos.
(if anyone is interested, "inver" means town at the mouth of" and Ness is the river of course.)
INVERNESS also stands for "It's Not Very Exciting, Right 'Nough, Except Saturday & Sunday"

Inverness has some lovely bridges which make for some good photos.

Inverness castle is one of the newest in the country. Not much history, you know!

The river Ness.

Yoouu-in had to go pick up his laundry early in the morning, and you can imagine his dismay seeing it cluttering up the forest like this. A large area of the forest was just absolutely covered with old clothes tied to trees - quite a sight!

The area is called Clootie Well, and is a semi-pagan site. People bring clothes of sick friends and family, have to drink from the well, run around 3 times in the direction of the sun, and then wash the clothes in the well and hang them in a tree. This will help to cure the sick friend. Here Nan bravely loses a sock to help out a friend of his.

Ah shame, not doubt someone really wanted their sick child healthy again :o(

Next it was off to Rogie Falls and a nice walk through the forest.

Rogie falls behind are amazing! You stand on the bridge and stare at the falls for 1 minute. Then look to the rocks on the right, and the rocks do a whole Matrixy wonky drunken hypnotic thing, moving around and in and out and up and down as they were alive. Woooooooo!!!!

Helen, what are you doing you Fannyyyy!!!!!

Carmen, Sonja and Linton recover from the hypnosis.

Next was a quick visit to the Corrie Shalloch gorge - not for the scared of heights.

I wander what keeps those select trees so green?

We stopped at Ullapool for lunch, our most northerly point of the trip. Lunch was at the local Fish and Chippie, (chippie of the year!) and delicious it was, but methinks the Pollock that I had in Rathlin Island last year was better.

There was highland dancing galore planned for the evening, so we pulled over in a parking lot with a view to learn some steps from the highland master himself.

Amanda and Yoouu-in do The Gay Gordon.
Nan and Amy give it a go. After that we learned the highland Barn dance, and my all time favourite, Strip the Willow. Later on that evening, some of us guys were flung around like ragdolls by good purebred highland stock. Gads, those ladies are strong!!!

Poor Yoouu-in's finger was getting sore after taking 29 Photos!

On the way to Skye we passed some Crannoghs in a Loch, that is what what we are, and we rely on each other uh-ha.
A crannoch is a man made island. They would float out and start dropping rocks down to build these islands, to make a safe place to live and keep their cattle at night. They would row a baby cow across, and the rest would swim out to keep it company.

Skye at last, our home for the next 2 days. This is the village we stayed in, Kyleakin, named after the Norwegian, King Haakon, whose fleet settled here for a while. In the background you can see the relatively new Skye bridge, which a bit controversial as it detracted from the island feel of Skye.
Now as we recall, Bonnie Prince Charlie escaped from the English at Culloden fields, and was chased for quite some time before being smuggled onto the Isle of Skye disguised as Flora Macdonald's maid. From Skye he fled to France, where he spent the rest of his life in exile, the poor wee bairn!
His escape is commemorated in the haunting tune, The Skye Boat Song