Isle Ornsay, Skye

Footprint in the anchorage
[Kyle]We don’t know where we are. We have seen this place referred to variously as Isleornsay, Duisdale, Duisbeg and Iarmain. At any rate, in the morning, we rowed ashore for our run and were completely stunned. This place is unbelievably picturesque. I’m beginning to think that Scotland is a photographer’s nightmare. Had we been strolling around, say, Grand Island, Nebraska, getting a good picture of the area would be easy. We’d go to the grain silo, wait for dusk and snap a few shots. Done. Now you have the rest of the day off. Here, there are achingly beautiful views for 360 degrees. Every time we walk 20 feet, there’s a new 360 degrees to worry about. Not only that, by the time you do a 360 and end up where you started, the light has totally changed and everything is completely different. There’s mist, clouds, shafts of light, even sun sometimes, constantly changing and surprising us. If we had a film camera, we’d be completely broke from buying film. I wonder how many people have gone bankrupt in this way. At the end of any given day, Maryanne and I take nearly 200 photos. We might delete 10 or 15 for being out of focus or otherwise composed poorly. We’ve tried to cut back but it’s impossible. There is so much nice stuff out here.

After our run/photo shoot, we went into a gallery and spoke to a painter who was having an exhibition. He says he often paints from photographs because, when he paints landscapes live, sometimes he’ll get halfway through a painting of a scene, then the mist will clear and reveal a mountain that wasn’t there or his mountain will disappear. Then he’ll have to change everything. We knew how he felt.

We popped into the local pub for a light meal. The barman was well beyond rude and into blatant disapproval. He sneered at our orders and the rest of the time glowered at us. I do believe he’s the first real jerk we’ve encountered in Scotland. Barman might have been a poor choice for a job, I think. I ordered a soup, which was really good. Poor Maryanne has been looking for scallops everywhere. This place had them. She got all excited when she spotted a serving of mussels - a big, overflowing serving sized bowl. What she got were three scallops. Three. She noted that they hadn’t bothered to venture too far into the plural with that one.

We then went to a Gaelic whisky shop for the sampling advertised outside. I prefer sampling because there are so many varieties of whisky at I could never afford to buy my way through whole servings just to find out what I like. Also, in spite of the fact that I drink a lot, as in often, I don’t drink very much. Usually, once I’ve gone into the pub and tried a whiskey, I’m done for the day. Thimble sized tastes are a much more effective way for me to see what’s out there without getting tanked. We found one that we did like enough to buy a whole bottle. Many whiskies are finished with a couple of years in sherry or port casks. This one was finished in rum casks. Yummy.

We had yet another pretty sunset and our third straight day with no rain. I can’t believe our luck! The forecast for tomorrow is the same – light winds and no rain. We’ll see.

[Maryanne]Kyle has been loving this nice sunny weather, it really makes such a difference to our view of the world. We are so lucky to have so much time in so many wonderful places. You can take just a few days from any of these places and it would be enough for us to talk about fondly for years (especially when the sun shines).


Kyle braves the cold, cold water for a bath
We arrived ashore hoping to take a shower at the local pub (Many pubs offer shower facilities for yachtsmen and campers over here), but when we found the price was £6.50 each (without towels) we decided against it. I opted for a strip wash with heated water once we were back on the boat, but Kyle braved the cold water and jumped in - yikes! It was maybe our failure to "purchase" our showers that made the barman seem to hate us so?


More, yes more, stunning scenery