Skye to Rhiconich

Good start to the day, over the bridge to mainland Scotland from Skye and a little drive to Eilean Donan Castle a small castle on an island at Dornie village. We didn’t want to visit, just took a couple of photos, and went for a bit of a walk on the road. We are following a suggested route – the Scotland 500. It has been developed by the Scottish Tourism Board in an effort to provide a good around Scotland drive. You’ll be surprised to learn it is 500 miles long.

Our first stop was Applecross, a short drive over a mountain pass to the coast. I’ll just quote from our Lonely Planet Book,

“The road here is 25 miles over the Bealach na Ba (626 metres – Pass of Cattle) the third highest motor road in the UK and the longest continuous climb….it climbs steeply and hair-raisingly via hairpin bends perched over sheer drops with gradients of up to 25%.”

You get the idea!!! We sometimes had to reverse down the road to a suitable passing spot due to oncoming traffic. Not once did we go over the side!!! The road is impassable during winter. As luck would have it, Pam was on the open side, she had tears of joy in her eyes by the time with got to the top and was so in awe of the spectacular drive she couldn’t speak for an hour other than express a couple of violent grunts in my direction. We survived the drive and had a coffee at the quaint little coastal village of Applecross. There was a coffee van on the foreshore so we enjoyed a hot drink and a bit of a debrief, we may have possibly made some minor adjustments to the remainder of the days travels.

On the road again, nothing quite as sticky as the first couple of hours. Following the coast to Gairloch, Dundonnell, called in to the Corrieshalloch Gorge for a walk across the bridge over the gorge and to the precarious lookout, a bit scary, the gorge is so deep and the bridge and lookout so high above the waterfall and stream.

Not long before it was time for a settling ale at Ullapool. Decided to drive to Lochinver for tea, another beautiful coastal village. So many places of interest along the way today, huge mountains, deep lochs, waterfalls there is so much to see along the west coast of Scotland, I may have taken too many photos again? We may have set a record today – 3 hours drive in 12 hours, I’m sure we can do better than that tomorrow!!