Back at it

Thursday, November 6

I woke up today feeling somewhat better.  Not as tired, not as hot/cold, not as snuffly, as yesterday.  After a shower and breakfast (same as yesterday), I decided I’d be ok to rejoin the group today.  It helped too that far less rain was forecast.  All systems were go.

We started the day walking around Portree and photographing the harbor, which is lined with brightly painted pastel houses.  I spent some time with Don looking at different angles to shoot from but I also think I did pretty well on my own too.  Portree is a decent sized town, certainly not tiny, but it has a nice array of shops, cafes and views to fill a morning, which we did.  I bought some tartan purses and hit a gin shop where I did a tasting and bought a gin for me and a vodka for my sister, as well as a small bottle of wild cherry moonshine, which ought to be interesting!

Along the pier was a whale watching company which was touting humpbacks, orcas and puffins as well as the famous sea eagle (not to be confused with seagull).  It was soooooo tempting.  If I had free time here I would definitely do that.

Our next stop was a ruined church in a cemetery.  The church was literally just the four walls.  No roof, no interior.  There were old headstones in various states of decay around the church, many of them from the 1700s and 1800s.  The majority of the dead were servicemen. The cemetery wasn’t terribly well kept; there was a lot of uncut grass and uneven ground.  It had all the character that made it a wonderful place to work with from a photographic perspective.  I spent almost all my time with Don here.  He really helped me compose the shots and realize how to make the overcast sky work. There were sheep milling around which just added to the atmosphere.  I haven’t looked at my photos yet, but I am really anxious to see them.

We hopped back in the vans and headed toward the Sligachan Bridge, but by the time we got there it was raining pretty steadily so we gave up on that planning to hit it on our way back to Portree.  We continued on to Kyleakin, a tiny seaside village that is home to the ruins of a 15th century castle.  

The castle itself is perched on a hill surrounded on three sides by water.  We approached it from within the village and shot across the small inlet, which was interesting enough, but approaching it more directly on a path on the hill, we noticed there was a small boat that had wrecked in front of it, and a much larger boat that had beached further inland.  What is it with all these ruined boats here?  And these were definitely shipwrecked and not to be confused with perfectly good boats that are just sitting in very low tide and will be floating again the next time the tide comes in.

Anyway, at one point early on in our visit here, my camera battery ran low.  I walked back to the van and passed a small gift shop.  A gentleman was standing on the sidewalk, so I smiled and said hi.  I stopped to chat and he asked me what I knew about the Isle of Skye flag.  I said not much at all and he responded “well, what will you tell people at home if they ask you about the flag?”  That made me giggle because of course there is little to no chance that anyone will ask me, but I played along.  His accent and his cheekiness had captured me.  He asked what we were doing and invited the group back after we were done to visit his shop and he’d take a photo of us with the flag and give us a shot of Drambuie.

We spent so much time with the castle and the shipwrecks that there was no way we’d make it back to the bridge we’d abandoned earlier in the day before the sun set.  Because I know Don’s personality, I knew he’d like the guy I met at the gift shop and he’d want to take his portrait.  Since we now had no reason to rush out of the village, we stopped at the gift shop.  My new friend, named Mark, greeted us and told us the story of the flag (designed by a 9-year-old local boy), set us up for a group photo with the flag, and gave us our Drambuie.  Mark and Don really hit it off and we all really enjoyed our brief visit with Mark.  What really struck me though was when Don shook Mark’s hand and said he’d come back when the group returns next year, Mark said “next year, we’ll hug because we’ll be friends then.”  Damn, if that doesn’t tug your heart strings.  This will definitely be one of my best travel memories.

Dinner was at 7 and we made it back around 5:45.  A quick rest in the room and we caught up over drinks in the bar.  The menu changed a bit tonight, thankfully.  I think we were all relieved we wouldn’t have the same choices for a third night.  Tonight I had the smoked mackerel mousse with a pickled apple slaw and freshly made crackers.  It was heavenly.  My main was pan fried salmon with a crab butter sauce.  That was just so good, I don’t even have the words.  Thankfully the chocolate gingerbread was still on the menu tonight so I chose the perfect ending to a wonderful meal.

Tomorrow actually appears to be a perfect weather day (gasp!) so we’re up early to go shoot sunrise and then head north.