Happy Birthday Kathy! - Blog 13

May 13, 2015

Happy Birthday to Kathy! How great it is to celebrate Kathy's birthday in the beautiful hills of Scotland with birthday songs from the Netherlands! Hold it! did I just write the Netherlands? It is true! Our fellow Bed and Breakfast guests from Germany rode with us to the starting point of of today's hike. As we got out of the car, I mentioned it was Kathy's birthday. We were wedged in a parking place with a motor home filled with young men from the Netherlands. They must have overheard my birthday announcement, because they popped out with a lit candle and sung, with much gusto, Happy Birthday in Dutch! What a hoot!

That was the perfect start to a wonderful day of hiking in the Quiraing area of mountains with expansive views of the coastline. We hiked along the mountain ridge until we came to some interesting rock formations called "The Needle" and "The Prison".  We returned to the car in the early afternoon and continued over the mountain pass to the port city of Uig. At the suggestion of our host we stopped in at Ella's cafe for home made butternut squash soup and fresh home made bread. It was very very good and a perfect hold over till supper.

We continued around the coastline to enjoy the now sun lit views and little coastal villages. We ventured to the Fairy Glen and found a very peaceful if not mystical area of hilly mounds with circles made of small stones and several cairns.  Further down the road there was a nice display of crofter homes at the Sky Museum of Island Life. It really helped to better understand what life was like for many on this windswept coastal area. 

From Kathy: I have read in books how the Highland Scots used peat to heat their homes and we finally got to see what peat is.  Our host Joanna is a native of the Isle of Skye and she says that they still go out and cut peat each year as a low cost way to heat their home.  I had no idea that this was still done!

We had just enough time to hike out toward the Rubha Hunish. We did not make it all the way since the ground was quite water saturated and difficult to traverse. Plus we had birthday dinner reservation locked in that we did not want to miss.

At the suggestion of our host, we chose to have our special birthday dinner at the Flodigarry Hotel Restaurant. The setting could not be more pretty and the food was very delicious and creatively presented. The perfect end to a wonderful day!

Correction Note: A great resource for our planning was Secret Scotland. Their route and site suggestions have been excellent. They, too, are following this blog and provided the following correction to our Culloden trip: "Need to correct you about Culloden. It wasn't an English versus Scottish conflict. It was a Protestant versus Roman Catholic civil war. There were Scots fighting on both sides and on the Jacobite side there were French and Irish soldiers. It was not a battle that secured English dominance of Scotland, but it did result in the systematic dismantling of the Clan system in Scotland."

Thank you Secret Scotland!!

Tim and Kathy