Obviously, because we’re in Scotland, we better go check out some distilleries and drink some Scotch…which is called just “malt” or “whisky” here. I’m going to make sure to tell my friend Greg that every time he mentions Scotch. We had already dipped into a few bottles of the local Bad Na H-achlaise and Crabbie’s Yardhead when we were in Gairloch, but we are in Skye now, so let’s get into some of that good Island Whisky!
That’s the Crabbie’s. It only costs like 12 GBP for that.
We cooked another big breakfast and then drove on over to Talisker on the Isle of Skye. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get on a tour. In fact, they told us we couldn’t even get a tour in until the following week. I guess this place stays busy all year! Still, there was lots to do at the distillery, including browsing the gift shop and looking for expensive malt.
GMac and Father Law spent some time tasting while the rest of us went for a stroll around the distillery location. The entire region smelled like…well, a peaty distillery. Imagine that. Here’s a Garmin of our stroll:
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/12169718129
And here are some photos:
We also saw plenty more birds, so here’s a video of that.
GMac bought me this fun little Scottish bird pocket guide, and we’ve seen like half the birds in that book already.
For lunch, we drove up the hill to this dope seafood spot and chowed down. I make fun of food in the UK a lot, but most of our meals have been very good. Nothing labeled “spicy” is actually spicy, so at least there’s still that stereotype. While we were waiting for our food, a fighter jet ran right up the valley, so that was cool. We also saw a few Eurofighters doing some dogfighting maneuvers later while stopped at this fun whisky shop on the way back from Talisker. It’s good to know that other countries still waste money on “defense”.
After returning from Talisker, GMac and I rode our bikes around the area to get a better feel for the lay of the land. We rode north first to this lovely seaside town of Plockton. Here are some photos to give you an idea of what that looks like:
And here’s what the ride looked like:
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/12173337259
Even though we’ve been here for a few days now, it still is pretty funny to witness these hilariously large tides. I guess most people are just totally fine with not being able to use their boats for half the day. Also, we saw some signs that the tourist season is over for this seaside town. There were dozens of empty mooring buoys our in the Loch that must be full of boats in the summer time. I haven’t fact checked this, but because some of the signs were in Norwegian, I think the Norwegians might come bring their boats over to look at some of the lands their ancestors once owned. Someone look that up.
Also, I guess Scotland suffered a lot more during WWI than WWII. I guess the UK was just grabbing men from all over Scotland to sent right to the meat grinder. There were war memorials in most villages we’ve been to, and Plockton was no exception:
War is not great. Good thing there’s always at least one going on…