Well with a deviation to the Isle of Sky for a couple of nights.
Leaving Inverness Castle,
the official start to the 500 route (even though you can’t actually get up there in the car which seems a tad odd!) we were surprised and not a little relieved to see the sun shining despite the weather forecast for rain, an auspice start to the route. We made our way through through Beauly and the Muir of Ord before stopping at the Fogie Falls.
The woodland walk took us through beautiful Scottish heather
and we saw lots of toadstools to my delight.
We came to the river and followed it as it flowed over the many rocks towards the main falls.
We crossed the suspension bridge where in the late summer you can see salmon leaping the waters returning from the open seas to their breeding grounds up river.
We were sadly too late to see them, story of our lives!
Driving further, the scenery continuing to amaze and delight us, not to mention the fact that the sun was still shining!
We stopped at Little Garve and enjoyed the water gushing through the arch bridge right next to the car parking area.
All good things come to an end and the sun decided it had had enough of delighting us and situation normal (for Scotland) would resume in the form of heavy clouds gathering and sinking low over the mountains. Veering off the 500 route we stopped at Eilean Donan Castle,
the most photographed castle in Scotland apparently,
and hardly surprising from the number of tour buses in the car park offloading their passengers! We decided to have a look around and the castle was small, with lots of knocks and crannies and well furnished however, the number of tour groups congregating in the rooms to listen to their guides detracted from the possibility to enjoy the surroundings or even hear the audio guide.
We crossed over the Skye bridge at Kyle of Lochalsh and located our airbnb cabin which is to be our home for a couple of nights, right next to the loch. The rain held off while we walked into the village for dinner and an early night.
