Current Location: Portree, Isle of Skye, Scotland
Isle of Skye is the largest and northernmost of the major islands in the inner Hebrides of Scotland. March is not the time of year that most travelers decide to visit the Isle of Skye. In the summer months, they swarm the island to see the Cuillins and get mere glimpses of natural wonders like the Faerie Pools and Neist Point. In the winter, the famous green hills and rugged landscapes are covered in a dense brown heather and the clouds rarely part. Everyone in Scotland jokes that the dictionary is exclusively composed of different words for rain. However, we found an immense peacefulness being alone with the fog (and without the tourists!).
Maybe this is informed by the music I listened to when I was growing up, but the Scotland of my mind can be seen from two separate angles. It can be twee and adorable like Belle & Sebastian, with elegant continental breakfasts and tie-dyed, spray-painted sheep. Or it can be darkly pastoral, with an almost-surreal landscape, and occultist signifiers in broken-down cairns and castles, like Mogwai or Boards of Canada. Fortunately, on this trip, we got a taste of both styles of Scottish living when we drove over almost the entire length of the territory, and especially so when we were on the Isle of Skye.
There were moments where our small car felt like a submarine. The lichen-covered rocks and sulfurous-looking hills of the countryside were coral reefs, the sweeping grasslands plains of seaweed. I had my drone with me, and the moments that I could successfully fly it (through the onslaught of wind and rain), if you had changed the axes it would not have been dissimilar from diving deep to excavate some kind of shipwreck. Except, unlike the bottom of the ocean, there’s sheep everywhere. So many sheep.
himheradventure.com 