Macbackpacking it – part 2

Friday 23 December

After leaving Inverness, our first stop of the day was at the ‘Clootie Well’. It is a ‘fairy’ spring that comes out of the ground about half way up a random little hill. According to legend the water has healing properties. If you soak a piece of clothing associated with a particular afflicted body part and then leave the cloth hanging on a tree, that body part will heal as the cloth disentigrates (no one ever said it would be a quick process!). So, for example, you would soak a sock if you had a foot problem. As you can see from the pictures there are cloths, or cloots, everywhere!

Continuing on, we stopped for a walk around Corrieshalloch Gorge. there was another bridge here – a suspension one – and it definitely had a maximum limit of six people, which we actually adhered too! Although there was one girl on our tour who was a bit ditzy, and didn’t really listen/pay attention to much. She wanted to go on, even though we had been told to wait. We then headed further up through the Highlands, which was very scenic. I have always maintained that I like Scotland more than Ireland, and I think half the reason is because even when the weather is grey and dull, Scotland still has bright greens, whereas Ireland just seems grey. But then again, when the sun did come out in Ireland… wow, it was quite amazing. Who know, I could just be imagining the difference in ‘greeness’, but I just <3 Scotland

Big Waterfall

Little Waterfall

Mum thinks we had lunch at Ullapool (I have no idea what the name of the place is, so she is one up on me . A quick googlemaps search says she’s probably right though). It was a sleepy seaside village, with most things shut for the winter, but I could imagine it being quite lively in summer.

  

The view

After lunch we continued along the scenic west coast, and less than an hour from Kyleakin Richard found out that there was a landslide on the road we had to use and it was closed! So we had to have a break in Lochcarron – where we could see the workmen on the other side of the loch – so that Richard didn’t break his driving limit for the day. It was then about a THREE hour drive, almost back to Inverness, and on to Kyleakin where we were spending the next 3 nights and Christmas…

Richard taking multiple pics of the tour group :P

Our tour group :)

Looking across Loch Carron - you can see the work vans

Looky here, I did something smart! I had to embed this map using HTML (I don't even know if that's what you do, or if that phrase makes any sense hahaha) But the top map is the short route, while the bottom map shows the long route we had to take (Note we didn't actually go all the way back into Inverness, but it was easier this way).

Oh, I forgot... when we arrived at the Kyleakin hostel, they gave as a welcome gift of Haggis. Now I have had haggis before, and the thought of what is in it doesn't bother me at all. But after having had it about 3 times I can definitely say that I do not like the taste. There is just something about the spice mix they use that I don't like. I mean I will eat it if it's in front of me, but I won't go out of my way to get it. After the haggis we went to the local pub for dinner, which is an extremely long walk from the hostel; about two buildings down the road..