A day of walking!

We both woke up feeling slightly worse for wear and still full from the amazing food the night before. I would definitely recommend dinner, and if you can, a stay at The Three Chimneys.

We ate as much of breakfast as was humanely possible before taking a final few pictures of the restaurant and packing up the car for the next stage of the trip. 

Our first destination was Neist Point Lighthouse which was around 7 miles from the hotel, but around a 20 minute drive along some single track roads.  The lighthouse is one of the most famous in Scotland and is a reasonably short walk from the road end, although the concrete path gets very steep at times. 

Neist Point Lighthouse was built in 1900 when it was a manned lighthouse. Since then the internal light system has been updated to an automated system that no longer requires daily maintenance. The light is 43 meters above sea level and can be seen up to 16 nautical miles offshore.

I really enjoyed the walk down to the lighthouse, but not so much the return journey; my legs were burning!








After returning to the car, and navigating around the cows that were now spilling onto the road, we set the Sat Nav to take us onto our next walk of the day. It was an hour plus drive back via Portree to the most famous walk on the island.

The Old Man of Storr is famous the world over and the walk is one of the busiest. The ‘Old Man’ is a large pinnacle of rock that stands high and can be seen for miles around; it was created by a massive ancient landside.

We had read that the walk was of medium difficulty, which was spot on. The first part was gravel and all uphill, this was then followed by numerous staircases of rocks, finishing with grassy and rocky slopes at the top. But, we made it and the views were unbelievable!





I forgot to mention that it wasn't raining and instead it was about 21 degrees; we were both sweating when we got to the top. The descent was much faster, but definitely not good for the knees. We got back to the car just after 4pm, ready for a shower and a nap. 

Tonight we are staying in a pod in a place called Skeabost; its only a short drive from Portree so is in an ideal location for all the things we want to do on this side of the island. Iain put the address into the sat nav, and it took us around a single track road for about 6 miles - it was horrendous! We eventually arrived, wishing we had been pro-active and picked up dinner in Portree as I really didn't fancy driving that road again tonight.

We were met by the owner, a lovely lady, who asked which direction we had come; apparently, we came in the wrong way. If we had followed her instructions (yes, she had sent them to me!), we would have had to navigate 1 mile of single track road making it less than a 10 minute drive from the centre of Portree! In that case, dinner was saved and we would try the other way!

We are staying in the pod called Lighthill; there are only 4 and we are the furthest from the car park. We have a lovely view out to a field and lots of sheep. We stayed in a pod at Silverstone but this is five star compared to it! We have a shower, microwave, fridge, pull-out dining table, a sofa and a TV, it really is glamping!

After dumping our bags, we decided to drive to Portree and pick up a takeaway; I fancied Pizza so we parked up and went to the "only" pizza takeaway we could find. There were picnic tables outside the takeaway overlooking the bay but we decided to drive back to the pod and relax.

I'm currently drinking a gin and tonic, while watching the football on the TV; this is the life!


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