We All Have Our Own Twilights, Isles, and Abysses To Return To…After 7 Shots of Single Malt.

Morning, Isle of Skye, the bus rolls on and stops at Kilt Rock/Mealt Falls, but busdriver Dave leads us up to the edge and points the other way, down to the rocks below, where we see this epic view.  “An episode of Game of Thrones was filmed here,” he says, pointing the opposite way of the falls. Several folks on the bus start freaking out and peppering him with questions, but not me.  “I’ve read the books,” I say to one lady. “But never seen the series.”   As soon as her voice rises “OMG, OMG, you have to see it!!”,  I immediately phase out into my happy place and put my eye up to the viewfinder and see if I can capture the epic view.

But I can’t, or not with something as simple as an image. The views on Isle of Skye feel expansive, stunning land and seascapes built for movies that go beyond the farthest edge of your peripheral vision, and degrees of contrast no HDR can truly represent.  With the sun out in force, purple carpets of heather are everywhere.  Another day in Scotland, blowing through time like it doesn’t exist.  2.5 hours pass and it feels like we just got here, then we’re back on the bus and off down the road again.

All These Ancient Ruins Make One Indifferent To Time

To the far north tip of the Isle of Skye lie the ruins of Duntulm Castle, late of Clan Macdonald, who, not unlike their Macdonald relatives did at Armadale Castle on Skye, punted on their castle in 1732 and built a glorified farmhouse out of its stones a few miles south.   Seriously?

Dave the Busdriver tells us a local legend: the clan abandoned the castle after the infant son of a chieftain who lived there fell out of window while in the charge of a nursemaid, dashed on those rocks you see below.  Sufficiently bad juju that they set the nursemaid adrift in the Atlantic sea in a tiny boat.

The Isle of Skye continues its artwork clouds, dramatic landscape, and green fields beneath a bright sun.  No doubt it’d be just as dramatic beneath the gray clouds and rain. Onward we go.