Our general travel route for this week ... (Note: Google maps would not recognize the ferry from Mallaig to Lochboisdale so there are two maps here. Each shows the "missing Ferry" section)
Friday morning, after breakfast at the Eagle and Child Inn, we headed north to Keswick and the
Derwent Pencil Museum. Interesting and fun place. The entrance fee gets you a souvenir pencil. As you walk through the museum you can answer quiz questions, based on the displays, and "win" more souvenir pencils. They have displays showing the world's largest pencil, a special pencil made for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and special wartime pencils used to hide maps and compasses given to airmen flying sorties over Europe (in the event they got shot down and could use them to find their way to safety) during WW II.
The gift store sold a variety of Derwent drawing and painting supplies and, of course, we could not leave without some of them.
Leaving with our souvenir pencils and goodies we continued northward to Scotland and Stirling where we stayed at the Stirling Highland Hotel, a short walk, albeit steeply uphill, to the
Stirling Castle where the views out over the valley were pretty spectacular.
For dinner we ate in our hotel restaurant, chicken with haggis for Kris and beef with mashed potatoes and green beans wrapped in pancetta for Brian. Both excellent.
Saturday, not having purchased breakfast with our room, we started with lattes and scones at Caffe Nero in central Stirling. On our first attempt at leaving Stirling our GPS tried to take us back to the Stirling castle where we ended up in their parking lot. The attendant explained that the Sat Navs for many people make the same mistake. She got us sorted and we were on our way north. We stopped in the pretty riverside community
Dunkeld for a rest and some lunch, and a couple of hugh sausage rolls for later, before continuing north to Newtonmore. Our stay for the night was the Glen Hotel which didn't open until 3:00 pm so we headed directly to the
Highland Wildlife Park where the only exhibit we were really interested in was the one for the Scottish Wildcat where they have a successful breeding program for this cat for which they estimate there are only about 400 pure cats known to exist in the wilds of the highlands. The biggest danger to the purebred breed is when they cross breed with domestic cats which have been released into the wild.
They currently have 20 purebred kittens that are not on display because they don't want them to become used to humans. They will be released into the wild one day. This time of day is a bit of a lazy time for the cats so no activity but we did see a couple high up in the enclosures having a kip.
Back at the hotel we got checked in and immediately down to the dining room for dinner; Glen Hotel Chicken Supreme with veggies for Kris: fish and chips for Brian. Dinner was followed by wine and Guiness along with our first "Malt of the Month"...
Sunday morning began with a bit of panic. Brian, having done all our reservations etc discovered that he had totally forgotten to make ferry reservations for our planned day trip from South Uist to Barra return as well as the ferry from North Uist to the Isle of Harris. Quickly onto the Calmac website only to find "no reservations available" on any crossings for the days we had planned to travel. DRAT! Thinking that the situation might be like BC Ferries where they always leave some room for drive-ons, Brian called Calmac only to find, "No, all spots are reserved. You can go to the terminal and get in the standby lane and hope someone doesn't show up". DOUBLE DRAT! Well, we weren't too worried about Barra because that was just a day trip on and off the wee island. Disappointed but not a big deal. Not getting from North Uist to Harris, on the other hand... we have reservations (expensive ones). Looking online, Brian found we could make a reservation for Thursday so would only have to forego one night of our reservation on Harris but would have to find accommodation for one more night on North Uist. Bugger but better than nothing. So ferry reservation made.
We checked out and headed west for Mallaig to catch the ferry to Lochboisdale on South Uist. Along the way we stopped for a rest and wander about the town centre of Fort William. We stopped in at a Costa Coffee for a couple of lattes. While there, Brian checked Calmac's website for a possible North Uist to Harris reservation for Wednesday AND... lo and behold, someone must have cancelled as there was a spot available on the 10:00 AM sailing. WOW! Brian snapped that up in a hurry. After he refreshed the webpage and found "No reservations available" again, so it must have just been the one cancellation. Whoever you are... thank you :-). Made the rest of the drive to Mallaig much happier.
We arrived in Mallaig, got checked at the ferry terminal and followed the directions where to get in line. We had lots of time before the ferry so walked up the hill into the small downtown. After looking in a few stores, we went into the Cabin Cafe for a couple of bowls of
Cullen Skink and an order of calamari. The calamari was excellent but the soup seemed more like leek and onion than a good Cullen Skink but we were hungry and it was rather tasty so no biggie. After eating we walked back to the ferry only to find all the cars that were around us gone and our car sitting alone in the lot. CRAP! The attendant said to us "oh, is that your car then? Well the ferry left already so you'll have to drive back to Skye and catch a ferry there!". After seeing the looks on our faces, he said "just joking... get your car and join the end of line 2 over there" and pointed to another part of the lot. The bugger, we could only laugh! The ferry ride was pretty uneventful although a bit wobbly at times as the smallish ship rocked in the waves. It was getting near dark when we landed and had started to rain. Luckily, there was little traffic on the 9 miles of single track road to get to our hotel, the
Polochar Inn, for the next two nights, just in time to check in and hit the dining room before it closed for the night. A couple of bowls of their soup of the day, carrot and parsnip with chunky bread, did the trick. Long day and soon we were sound asleep.
Monday started with a nice cooked breakfast then we headed off towards the
Uist Woollen Mill on North Uist. On the way we stopped first at the
cafe at Kildonan Museum. Unfortunately, their espresso machine was on the fritz so we had to settle for a cup of instant decaf coffee (yuk!). Luckily they had a nice fresh chocolate orange cake of which a piece took the edge off the terrible coffee. It rained quite a bit on our drive north but there was not much traffic on the single track road so it was pretty easy going. The woollen mill was open, as expected and hoped, so Kris went in while Brian had a post-cake nap in the car. A half-hour later she emerged with enough beautiful yarn for a future sweater project. Happy, happy, happy.
Leaving the woollen mill we stopped at the nearby Grimsay Boat Haven, a display illustrating the long history of boat making by the Stuart family in the area. Beautiful display.
Along with the display building is a small cafe which we can attest serves a nice lunch. We had a ham and onion quiche, a curried Thai soup, and a slice of chocolate brownie cake with vanilla ice cream. Nice :-)
On the way back to the hotel we stopped in at the lovely little roadside Puffin Studio Crafts store on the Isle of Benbecula. A great little place to pick up potential gifts and souvenirs. Back at the hotel we had booked in for dinner where Kris enjoyed a chicken dish with cabbage, ham and a haggis bon-bon while Brian wolfed down a large plate of haddock and chips. Afterwards, in the bar we enjoyed wine and Guinness although we were the only patrons without a dog.
Tuesday, another good breakfast, check out and on our way north all of 43 miles to Lochmaddy North Uist. First stop was the Kildonan Museum where we spent a good hour perusing the excellent displays showing the history of the area. Then we headed back to the cafe at the Grimsay Boat Haven for a couple of lattes and, of course, scone and cake. A quick stop in at the woollen mill resulted in a small knitting kit project (a nice wool cap for Brian) added to Kris' "to do" list. We arrived in Lochmaddy a bit early so stopped at their small museum, gift shop and cafe. A couple of small souvenirs in the gift store, some mint tea and lime cake in the cafe and it was time to go (we had seen the museum on our last trip through the area in 2019). We checked into the
Redburn B & B in Lochmaddy and settled in for a rest before walking over to the Lochmaddy hotel for dinner. We had stayed at the Redburn house 3 years ago and had eaten at the hotel then and the bar lounge eating are was rather drab and dated. It is very nice now and the food is a lot better than we remembered it. A real tasty beef & ale pie for Kris while Brian had a very good fish and chips. Really good!
Wednesday we were up a bit early, had a quick bite to eat in the kitchen then headed off to Berneray to catch the ferry across to the Isle of Harris. The ferry was quite small but they crammed some large trucks, a bus and a bunch of cars as well as a large group of bicyclists who are doing the
Hebridean Way. Our first stop was the Hotel Hebrides, in Tarbert, for some lunch, a nice bowl of seafood chowder and a huge smoked salmon salad. Since we couldn't check into our accommodation until 4:00pm, we decided to go next to Stornoway and drop off some laundry so it would be ready well before our departure from the island on Friday. Errand done, we walked around the town centre a bit before heading off to the
Seacroft B&B on the west coast of the island where we had reserved a "Seapod" for the next two nights. We entered the information into our GPS and off we went. Little did we know, until later, that our GPS picked the shortest route which turned out to be a long single track trek through what can only be called the outback of the island. Geesh, what's wrong with just going the main road? Oh well, we made it and it is a beautiful place.
We met Sarah, our hostess, got instructions etc, got settled in and rested then walked down the hill to their main building for our 7:00pm scheduled dinner which had been pre-ordered. We had barely sat down when our baked cod plates arrived. Delicious. While eating we met and chatted with others staying at the B&B, couples from Switzerland, from the USA and southern England.
Thursday, after yet another good breakfast, avocado toast with poached egg for Brian; scrambled eggs with smoked salmon for Kris, we drove out to the UIG Community Shop where we filled the car's gas tank. Then we drove about a half hour north to the
Calanish Standing Stones. We've seen the standing stones twice already and since it started to rain decided not to pay the entrance to see them again, opting instead for some lattes and cake in the cafe. As a reminder, here's what the Calanish Standing Stones look like...
Early afternoon we drove into Stornoway to pick up our laundry. We had thought about just waiting until Friday to pick it up but decided that it would be just our luck that, for some strange reason, they could be closed on Friday leaving us no choice but to get on the ferry sans extra clothing. Later we drove south on Lewis to the
Abhainn Dearg whiskey distillery. It was a real bugger to find but with the help of a local couple we eventually found it and were able to join the 3:00pm tour. A very small place, not much to speak about, with dark rooms so no photos this time. Interesting tour though and their 10 yr single malt sample was very tasty. After, we enjoyed another excellent seafood dinner (salmon steak and halibut steak with veggies) at the B&B while chatting with others staying there.
Nice evening and nice end to this week.
