The Road to Skye

We set out bright and early Monday morning to pick up the car we would be renting. As it turned out, however, the rental place didn't actually have our car available...so in the end we were driven to Stirling in order to pick up a suitable replacement. The only catch was that this was the day I was meant to register for my fall classes online. So there I was, sitting in the office of the Stirling rental car place, trying to access the registration page. Unfortunately everyone else in my year was as well, so I never was able to connect. I decided I would just try at a later point, and find some internet along the way.

There had been some debate on which route we would take up to Skye, whether it be the main road, large but fast-paced, or the back roads, narrow but empty. As it was my mom's first time driving on the other side of the road, we ended up opting for a bigger road, and so we headed off at first in the direction of Perth. As as can be expected to happen with eager travelers, however, we soon turned off onto another road, which, as the map indicated, proved to be a shortcut. We ended up going through some beautiful wild country, and into a little town called Muthill, which by the way had no internet.

Never mind that - we drove straight past the ruins of a 12th century church in the middle of an old graveyard. If I can't register for classes, I might as well visit a medieval ruin, yes? We pulled over and took a little walk down to the church, which was small and quite lovely. The gravestones were all quite old as well, and one of them was identifiable as a mason's grave, with a square, compass and chisel adorning its top. I only recognized this through my studies back home, so it was nice once again to actually see something in front of me which I could only picture before.

After taking a quick look around Muthill, we set off once more. The landscape was very nice, with a lot of trees, some fields and a lot of lush greenery. We went through a series of towns, and ended up eventually in a village called Comrie. I pulled out my laptop, and, while my mom sat in a little locally run coffee shop, I set up shop in the car and managed, at last, to register for my classes. Sitting in the car in the middle of a small town in Scotland...that's one for the record's, I'm sure!

After some lunch and some conversation with the owners of the shop - from whom we learned that Comrie apparently has the highest percentage of pensioners in Scotland - it was time to move on. We soon left the little villages behind, entering into a treeless landscape of grass and scrub. Some impressive mountains loomed around us for a while, but soon the road brought us to higher ground, and we were surrounded by a moonscape.

This was Rannoch Moor, about which we had been told by one of the owners of our B&B in Edinburgh. It really was dramatic, an expanse of red and brown bordered by looming snow-capped mountains. It was a completely different world from the hospitable landscape we had just left. The road eventually curved around a mountain, leaving the moor behind, but there was more waiting beyond.

It was an excess of riches. Fresh from the moor, we were now at the top of Glen Coe, a long valley flanked with immense mountains. The sun had chosen that moment to come out, and the large clouds were illuminated beautifully, adding to the grandeur of the scene. We pulled over to admire the sight, and to take some pictures of course.

Nothing could have competed with Glen Coe at that point, so it was a relief when we saw that our destination for the night, Fort William, was only a few miles away. Fort William, upon entering, appeared to be entirely composed of B&Bs, but we soon found one to suit our fancy and headed out for dinner at a place called The Crannog, where we had some tasty fish for dinner.