A Scottish Journey II

At the end of my post yesterday, I left you with a view of the bridge connecting the Scottish mainland with the Isle of Skye, the largest and most northerly island in the Inner Hebrides.

Hub and I were on Skye for less than 24 hours.  It is one of our most favourite places, so even such a short visit was welcome.

We were able to fit in a short visit to the village of Kyleakin – this is the first settlement to be found on arrival over the bridge on the east coast of the island.  It is a lovely spot, although once again the weather was not too kind to us.  So I don’t have very many photos.  But here are views of the bridge from the other side of the water (Kyle Akin), and the broader bay, looking back across to the northwest Scottish mainland town of Kyle of Lochalsh.

We stayed over night in Portree, the largest town on the island.  It has a beautiful and busy harbour, as you can see from this photo taken from our bedroom window during the evening.

The next part of our journey took us west from the Skye port of Uig to the port of Tarbert on the Isle of Harris, part of the Outer Hebrides.  From there we travelled north, crossing over to the Isle of Lewis, which is fact part of the same landmass as Harris, to the large town of Stornaway.

Again, the weather was not particularly conducive to photography, but it did brighten up somewhat as we left on the ferry to return to the mainland.

Here are some shots of the Stornoway shoreline.  You can see the dramatic contrast in the weather as we sailed away:

At the harbour mouth, we passed the Queen Elizabeth Ocean Liner:

And then it was open water for a couple of hours until we approached the mainland, heading for the port of Ullapool.

I am delighted that I managed to capture the beautiful colours of the water on this journey.  Scotland has the most stunning palette:

It also has gorgeous light.  Here are some views of the distant shore – I love the way the light is falling on certain parts of the valleys, and in the third picture, the row of houses:

From Ullapool, we travelled across country to the north east town of Wick – this will be the subject of tomorrow’s post. 🙂

(Click on any photo to enlarge)