Blarg: May 14-16 continued

May 14th continued:

Closer to Lochmaddy there is a very old prehistoric [edit--"very old" is a robarded pair of adjectives before prehistoric] cairn building that Shona and Val apparently have been in at one point! It would have been a lot of crawling in and I wonder if some of it didn't collapse some since last they were here, some 45 years ago, when they were 6 and 9. It's about 300meters up a hill and the kids literally *ran* all the way up it, and even did laps around the cairn afterwards. I guess we're not running them enough. Was neat to see the scale of something like this, although why is it that the persistent structures are always about 'I'm dead, look at me'? E-peens.

We continued our way north to Lochmaddy on the way to catch our 4pm ferry.

Lunch was at this apparently shabby hotel with suprisingly fresh food and low prices. Kid's meals were cheap; £2.50 for more than any of them, besides hollow leg Eilidh, could eat. I had battered fish and chips and they were quite good indeed. Hard-living 50-something barwoman doing catering for a room of 15, the public and private sections. She was crusty, but our food arrived fast and fresh, and at the end when Sam tried to tip her £5 on 50, she said "oh! that's too much." It was as if we had offered her jewels or similar adornments. Eventually she took it and explained that she was going to drink it all after she got off her (11 hour) shift with a gap-toothed grin.

Nana got the kids some books and puzzles for the trip. By about 3pm we were in line for the ferry and unfortunately it was a bit late, but we got on by about 4:25 and we were back out to sea. Again I think that the ferry is a wildly civilized way to travel. I had a cafe latte (these automatic espresso machines are brilliant) and we got to Skye around 6pm. Beautiful winding roads through to our B&B. Eilidh was feeling a bit tired and grumpy but mostly the kids have continued to be troopers on our travel days.

We ate at "The Cafe" in Portree on Skye. We had 3 tired and crabby kids by this point and we had a great waiter who made a lot of smalltalk with the kids and went into the back to find toys for the kids to play with. I had a steak and Skye ale pie which was fantastic--a bunch of puff pastry on top with a steaky, aley gravy. I thought the ale might be totally undetectable, but it was actually really good and clearly there. I also got to try Peartiser (like Appletiser)--carbonated juice. Pear juice is good with bubbles.

I've never stayed at a B&B before, but I could get used to it after this place. The proprietor, Bonnie, has a wonderful pair of people who walk and feed here (Jan and Archie). Bonnie played fetch with the children--I threw Jonathan and Bonnie brought him back, and dropped him in a slobbery pile at my feet. We got the kids into bed by 9pm, a mess, and came into the room to find a coal and peat fire going and AMAZING internet access. I get better wireless speeds here than I do at home. Everyone else dropped off but I sat by the fire until past midnight with the lights low, getting megabytes of precious internet infused back into my veins.

May 15: Sunday in Skye

Sunday edition: We awoke to rain on the Misty Isle. It is well named. Jan made us a big breakfast which was great--sausage links, unsmoked bacon, stornaway black pudding, eggs, orange juice, Ribena (black currant juice from concentrate), French press coffee, potato scones, grilled tomatoes. I should have asked for beans. There were also rolls, cereals, and toast. This basically served as lunch as well, since it was so huge.

We decided to go out for a long drive around the island to see the top two loops of Skye using a couple of very narrow "non-tourist" roads. The kids were reading in the back, which is great, except for car sickness, which sets in much more easily on these winding roads than the "set the cruise control and get in the back" of the prairies back home. Jonathan barfed on himself, his jacket, his car seat... aggh. We cleaned him up as best as we could and pressed on. The scenery was beautiful, I am told. Driving on these narrow roads with passing places with cliffs on one side and air on the other is fun but demands most of my attention.

After doing one of the loops, we landed back in Portree and checked out the Aros visitor center, which was a nice tourist trap with a cafe, theater (we came very close to taking them to a movie), and many gift stores. We stopped at the cafe for some ice cream cones and shortbread-crust pie ("Do you want ice cream or cream with that?" then brings me basically a 300mL serving of double cream that would have cost more than the cream itself). The kids played outside on an extremely slippery castle that had extreme angles and no slip proofing. The only thing less practical for that island is if the playstructure had been made out of, say, pressed and unlaminated sawdust with big labels that said "DO NOT GET WET."

After we patched up Jonathan from the inevitable fall, we took the other north loop. There were a few spaces that would have had amazing views, but the cloud restricted everything--we could have walked through a cold gale a few hundred meters to a vista point at Cuith-Raing (see pictures), but chose that discretion could be the better part of valor in that case. I remember Jen once said something about "fog and heavy wind" and I asked, how these could coexist? Yeah, well, near the ocean, they can.

Just like on Uist, there are sheep everywhere (including on the roads) and fences everywhere. Ze fenses--zey do nozzing. Val asked Jan about it later in the day and she said that before the fences, the sheep were. EV.RY.WHERE. I guess these fences actually do do something--it just isn't clear what, to a visitor. Perhaps they just formed wool roads.

Stopped back in Portree at about 4:30 or so and went for a pint with the idea of getting the kids to eat early, but Jonathan had just had enough and became quite grumpy and intractable. I was about ready to pick up some sandwich meat and give up on dinner, but SuperVal came out and coddled him long enough for us to sit down at the Cafe again. I generally am not a big fan of repeating restaurants unless they're amazing, but here I honestly would have done anything, and our good waiter was there who took care of the kiddos again. Eilidh had a giant milkshake to herself, they served us amazingly large portions, and I chose to have "beef olives"--sausage stuffing wrapped rouladen style in thin beef slices, served with haggis (this was OK, nothing special) and more bleeding Stornaway black pudding.

We had a quiet and nearly boring (though I welcomed the quiet) evening at the B&B. Jan said "we didn't even know anyone was here"--we had 3 introverts and a shagged out me in the B&B common room. They were still having their roast meal around 8-9pm while we had long finished eating.

May 16: to Stirling

Monday edition: "We awoke to rain on the Misty Isle. It is well named. Jan made us a big breakfast which was great--sausage links, unsmoked bacon, stornaway black pudding, eggs, orange juice, Ribena (black currant juice from concentrate), French press coffee, potato scones, grilled tomatoes. I should have asked for beans. There were also rolls, cereals, and toast. This basically served as lunch as well, since it was so huge."

If you have Stornaway black pudding twice a day, 5 days in a row, you will discover that Stornaway black pudding (purchased in the hard, sausage-like shape of a 2-foot-long, 6"-across salami) emerges unchanged in color, size, shape, and diameter.

I am falling a bit behind; there's typically not all that much time for writing (by the evenings I'm beat). Nonetheless I guess I'm only about 20 hours behind right now. More later!