PEAT SMOKE ON THE WATER

After a full day of stunning views and not much else, on the NW peninsula above

Saw one ruined MacLeod castle with great views. Tend to think that it's the clan's duty to maintain and even renovate and live in every castle in Scotland. Why not? They weren't that big, after all, maybe under 3000 square feet of interior space. Yeah, the walls are double-think solid rock and the staircases are tiny, and they are probably the devil to dust, but they're sort of homey. They fit in perfectly with Scotland's craggy granite landscape, in a way that none of the other structures, old or new, seem to.

We went to see the Old Man of Storr today, Scotland's version of New Hampshire's Old Man of the Mountain. Now, New Hampshire's just fell down last year, and is no more. Scotland's looks at first to be more durable, because it's made of basalt, but Graham said that people climb it, and it's so soft you can stick your fingers into it.

Am getting used to Skye. Expect everything to be gorgeous, and nearly had a heart attack when informed otherwise. Most of the people that come to live in Skye are retirees with some ties to the island, but there is a great deal of in- and out-migration. The waitresses and shopkeepers are often not even from Great Britain. Most seem to be from eastern Europe, which is also the case for many summer places on the coast of Maine.

Susan and I will be sorry to leave our little group tomorrow. Are formulating words of farewell to our fellow tour members, words of thanks to Graham, and appropriate size of tip. Our group formed one of those real but superficial closenesses based primarily on courtesy and shared expectations of a good time. I am as relaxed as I have been in months, and very happy, even though I would be happier with 24/7 wireless internet.

Tonight went to a very good restaurant in Skye called the Cafe Central. It was upstairs, plain, but good. Had a meat pie and veggies, and my own wee bottle of Chilean merlot.

Sue G. here. Another day of disgustingly fine weather. It must be witchcraft. Today we toured around two very picturesque parts of Skye, surviving an ambush by midges (apparently the missing link between gnats and mosquitoes). We also saw a recreation of a 19th-century island dwelling, complete with peat burning in the hearth right in the middle of the family residence.

Every place we went we were told that usually you couldn't see half of what we were looking at for the mist. So we are very grateful for the opportunity to see Skye at its best. Susan has taken a lot of fantastic photos, and yet they only begin to tell the story of how fabulous these landscapes are, and don't even scratch the surface of how challenging driving around sheep on a single-track road (Scotland's version of the one lane road--it would never work with us road-raging Americans) can be.

I must mention that tonight I tried haggis. It was delicious. So I have now had the Trinity of Scottish Cuisine: haggis, neeps (turnips) and tatties (potatoes). Yum! I have also, less successfully, sampled my first single malt whiskey. Thanks, I'll stick to Kahlua.

I also want to put in a word about Scottish signs. Susan has taken pictures of some because we're starting to compile a list. The theory seems to be that you put a sign in a really obvious place and make its meaning chillingly clear. One of my favorite examples: a large sign right next to the water in Oban that reads "DANGER: DEEP WATER." Another, at a road intersection in the Highlands: "WEAK BRIDGE: 300 METERS." Oddly enough, the intrepid Graham was driving us through an area on Skye yesterday dotted with hundreds of sheep and hundreds of boulders, the latter of which had heeded gravity's call from the cliffs above. There was not a single sign anywhere, as there would've been in the U.S., that said "Danger: Falling Rocks." On the other hand, there were no dead sheep lying about, so perhaps we were safer than we thought.

Another type of Scottish sign is the Double Entendre. What Americans know as a yield sign turns up here as "Give Way." The pooper-scooper sign here is always--ALWAYS--a picture of a Scottish terrier with the caption "No Fouling."
But my favorite D.E. sign so far is in downtown Edinburgh, intended as a detour around Royal Mile roadwork. It has an arrow and reads "Diversion."