Over the Bridge to Skye: September 2020 food & trip report (complete)

[Wordsworth]

Having already had both sets of booked holiday flights cancelled for this year (no Japan or Canada for me), I have given up on thinking that we will get overseas holidays in 2021. (I refuse to hope that a last minute booking may become possible, as I can’t take more disappointment.)

As you’ll all be well aware, the same thing happened last year to most of us. I was due to visit the USA twice, with the latter trip being an on-site WDW stay and our first every Disney cruise, in September 2020.

When that fell through, we decided to plan a trip closer to home instead - we are Scottish, but have never been to Skye, so we decided this was a good a time as any.

In case anyone else is planning a similar trip this year, I thought I’d do a quick trip report in case it helped. As always, the food is a big feature of holidaying for us, so there will be a fair bit about this as well.

We (being me (42) and DH (47) at the time) were away for 5 nights in total; I plan to keep all posts in this thread and will add an index here.

[Wordsworth]

The first day of our trip was actually a special date - it was our 15th wedding anniversary, and 25 years since our first date.

After we’d had a simple breakfast and exchanged cards at home (which is in Edinburgh), we packed up the car to set off for our first destination - Strathlachan, in Argyll and Bute.

From our starting point this was a detour on the way to Skye, rather than somewhere directly on the way, but given it was an important anniversary, we wanted to have a great dinner somewhere we’d already visited and loved (it would have been the Yachtsman Steakhouse at WDW).

The journey was relatively smooth, although there was a fair amount of traffic around Loch Lomond as clearly a lot of people had planned a September break in Scotland! We also had to take the Old Military Road detour at the Rest and Be Thankful (which is the highest point on the A83); it’s a beautiful area in terms of scenery, but prone to landslides closing the road.

The diversion could only take traffic going 1 way at a time, so we had a short wait for the oncoming traffic to clear, before a number of cars were escorted through in convoy. Unusual but we were actually fortunate not to be too delayed or diverted, as Old Military Road itself had to close for a while around our trip time.

After that it was plain sailing to the first place we’d planned to visit - Benmore Botanic Gardens. rbge.uk/visit/benmore-botanic-garden/

It was raining when we arrived (standard Scottish summer weather!) but I’d packed some homemade brownies for a midday snack and we were peckish, so we sat in the car and ate those. By the time we’d finished, the rain had stopped!

The entrance to the gardens had been tweaked due to COVID safety measures since our previous visit, but there was no need for us to queue outside as there was no one else ahead of us to pay. Masks on briefly to go to through the shop (only way to access the garden) and pop to the loo, then we were sanitised and off!

The first thing you encounter on entering the gardens is a taste of California - Redwood Avenue, made up of the giant trees. This was our primary reason for visiting, as DH loves redwoods.

The other major reason for our visit was the hope of seeing red squirrels - we hadn’t spotted any on our previous visit, but we were lucky to see several this time, including hopping between redwoods as we walked up the Avenue. Perhaps it was due to the break in the rain - they saw the opportunity to search for some food! This one was smart enough to head to their designated feeders...

Having achieved our two mains aims of the visit incredibly quickly, we spent another hour or so exploring the gardens. The sky in the following photos will demonstrate how quickly the Scottish weather can change, especially in the hills, but we were fortunate it mostly remained dry!

There was a brief, hard shower when we were at the top of the hill, but there was a shelter up there (it’s as if we know this might happen in Scotland) and it passed very quickly. Motto of holidaying here - always be prepared for changeable weather! I always have sunglasses and an umbrella.

As close as I’ll get to Japan in the near future!

Benmore has an educational centre where school kids do residential trips - I actually spent a week staying in this building more than 25 years ago (it’s probably 30 now, ≈≈≈≈) and it’s amazing how the memory hit as soon as I saw it.

We really enjoyed our visit to the garden; a lovely wander with lots to see at that time of year.

The garden has a nice cafe where we’ve enjoyed delicious cake in the past, however we didn’t want to fill up today in anticipation of the evening’s dinner.

Back in the car and now that check in time was near, we headed to our accommodation for the night. This was in the same place as our restaurant booking - Inver restaurant - as we’d been lucky enough to snag one of their four bothies. inverrestaurant/

It’s about half an hour’s drive or so from the gardens, with the last bit taking place on a single track road with passing places.

Check in was fast and we were soon headed to our bothy. (On our first visit we were escorted to the door but due to trying to reduce contact for covid reasons, we were just given directions this time, which was fine with us, no awkward chat at the door required!).

Just above the left hand chair on the last photo, you can see the ruin of Castle Lachlan, across Loch Fyne. You can walk over to it and the rocky beach; we didn’t this time, but here’s a couple of pics from our previous visit.

We also didn’t take a photo of the outside of our bothy this time, but here’s one from last time to give you an idea.

This time we passed a few chilled hours filling out the breakfast card (breakfast gets delivered to your room the next day):

Drinking the complimentary schnapps:

And watching US Open tennis on my iPad, as the bothies have WiFi.

Soon it was time for our dinner reservation. When you stay in a bothy, I think the tasting menu is assumed/required, but non residents there is also an a la carte option, so I’m sure they would allow bothy guests to take this too. We didn’t even ask - the tasting menu was what we wanted!

Thankfully our trip coincided with the rules allowing alcohol to be served with dinner (not always the case now in Scotland!) and we opted for the drinks pairing with our meal.

We started with a seat in the bar, with snacks (and a negroni for me).

Before moving through to the restaurant for the rest of the meal. I think I’m missing a pic of the little cup of broth we were served first, but here is the rest.

(we shared the optional cheese course)

(served with tea)

We loved our meal, as hoped. My favourite was probably the corn dish (I love corn) followed by the honey cake, but it was all delicious.

A short walk back to the bothy later, and day 1 was done.

[Wordsworth]

Because day 1 was a bit of a detour, day 2 was going to involve a fair bit of driving to our final destination of the Isle of Skye. And we didn’t stop as much at viewpoints as we might have done if we were overseas, as we’ve driven at least some of this route a few times before. As such, this entry is a bit light on non-food pictures. Apologies!

But back to Inver. While we were at dinner the previous night, our table in the bothy had been set for breakfast.

View from the window shows the tide is out on the loch.

Your breakfast order is left at the door to your bothy in a basket. Everything is carefully wrapped, and hot drinks come in a flask.

It’s all good but the bacon fat rowie has to be the high point; flaky and buttery, it’s delicious. I would have liked to savour it, but it was so great I hoovered it down instead.

We were keen to get things underway so didn’t linger too long after eating. We packed up the car (we had settled our bill the night before after dinner so could just leave the key in the bothy) and got on the road.

The scenery from the drive was tremendous, with our route taking us along the banks of a number of lochs, including more of Loch Fyne, Loch Awe and Loch Linnhe.

The latter is on the road to Fort William, somewhere we’ve never actually stopped despite driving through it on numerous occasions. Maybe next time!

(Some time before getting to Fort William, we’d attempted to find a viewpoint for Castle Stalker, but we ended up accidentally driving past and DH decided he wasn’t that bothered about turning around to try again. )

Further along the road is Spean Bridge, home to the Commando Memorial, which gives great views across the hills and mountains of the area. As you’ll see from the photo, after the blue skies of the morning, the weather was now tending towards dreich.

Which meant the view wasn’t as spectacular as it can sometimes be, but it was at least atmospheric.

As we got further north and the road started winding through the hills, the rain started in earnest. The scenery was still spectacular, just on the grey side. While we’d expected it, it didn’t exactly bode well for the days ahead - but then just as we hit the bridge over to Skye, it stopped! Things were looking up.

Live shot taken as we crossed the bridge:

So it wasn’t as dramatic as I expected, but we were on Skye!

We stopped to fill up the car with petrol at Broadford (it was cheaper than we expected, given the prices we’d seen on the highland roads to date) and then carried on to our first accommodation on Skye, at Edinbane Lodge.

edinbanelodge/

We had two nights booked here and as hoped, the room was lovely.

We relaxed for a bit before getting ready for dinner.

For our first night on Skye, we’d managed to get a table at Loch Bay, the one Michelin Star restaurant on Skye.

lochbay-restaurant/

We were really excited about this; due to COVID they were only accepting 4 tables of two at 7pm every evening they were open, and they were only opening a couple of times a week, so we were really pleased we could juggle our plans to make it. To secure our table, we’d had to pay for our tasting menu in advance.

We debating getting a taxi (or at least asking the hotel if that was a possibility!) but in the end DH decided he would drive. It wasn’t that far from our accommodation, but did necessitate a trip along a single track road again - it wasn’t dark as we set out but I didn’t envy DH the return drive later that night, especially since the sheep clearly considered the road fair game as well.

Arrival times were staged for the 4 couples, to ensure distancing on arrival, and we were the first. We settled into our table and looked over the night’s menu.

I had a gin and tonic while doing this, while my designated driver stuck to water in their hand etched glasses.

Of course being the considerate wife that I am, I decided to forgo the wine pairing option for the night... only joking! I am a terrible wife.

Now onto the main event - the food!

Where there’s a choice on a tasting menu, we’d normally pick an option each, but on this occasion neither of us could surrender the strawberry!

This was, hands down, the best meal we had in 2020.

Everything was so flavoursome, highlighting the undeniable freshness of the fish/seafood without overpowering it. I would definitely recommend it to anyone planning to spend time on Skye, particularly if you’re looking to celebrate a special occasion.

It was a fabulous start to our stay, and we went to bed excited to get out and explore more of the island the following day.

[Sandra & co]

This looks amazing are any of the locations in Outlander? Or is outlander even filmed in Skye? Food looks amazing too x

[Love*my*hols]

The food looks amazing! We were on Skye in September but just had fish and chips overlooking the sea!

[Wordsworth]

Originally Posted by Sandra & co

This looks amazing are any of the locations in Outlander? Or is outlander even filmed in Skye? Food looks amazing too x

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I don’t think Outlander is filmed in Skye, a few things have been though. I know they were thinking about doing the Game of Thrones prequel there but that got cancelled.

Originally Posted by Love*my*hols

The food looks amazing! We were on Skye in September but just had fish and chips overlooking the sea!

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Not a bad place for fish and chips either!

[Dr.JumbaJookiba]

Beautiful scenery, great looking accommodation and some fantastic looking food. Thanks for sharing, it's great getting threads like this for a change. It's been 35 years since I visited Skye, looks like I'd better think about going back.

[anji]

So lovely to read a new trip report and definitely food for thought. Our son lives and works in Edinburgh and we could visit him and then do this trip. We have a holiday currently re-booked for Canada (fingers crossed) but I'd love to do this too

[Wordsworth]

Originally Posted by Dr.JumbaJookiba

Beautiful scenery, great looking accommodation and some fantastic looking food. Thanks for sharing, it's great getting threads like this for a change. It's been 35 years since I visited Skye, looks like I'd better think about going back.

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I think Skye has definitely upped its food game in recent years as well, much like Scotland has. Lots of lovely places to stay and eat!

Originally Posted by anji

So lovely to read a new trip report and definitely food for thought. Our son lives and works in Edinburgh and we could visit him and then do this trip. We have a holiday currently re-booked for Canada (fingers crossed) but I'd love to do this too

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Edinburgh is a great starting point, you could also go the more direct route (which we came back) and stop off somewhere like Cromlix, or visit the Cellar in Fife...so many great options!

[Wordsworth]

Out first full day on Skye kicked off with a fabulous breakfast in Edinbane Lodge.

First up, porridge, sweet with cinnamon and nutmeg:

And then I asked to add bacon to one of the menu dishes to create this:

My husband was horrified I didn't just order a menu dish as it was, but I wanted both bacon and black pudding with my eggs...it was delicious, so I wasn’t embarrassed or regretful. It also wasn’t an issue (at least not for anyone other than DH).

There was also sourdough toast, fresh orange juice and tea, so it was a cracking start to the day.

We had decided to drive the Trotternish loop, from Portree to Uig (covering north western part of the island), so after a quick trip back to the room to put on our walking boots, we got into the car and drove back to Portree. While there are A roads on Skye, there are also a lot of narrow and single track roads, so driving anywhere always threw up an interesting mix!

Our first stop was for the Old Man of Storr. They are building a bigger car park at the foot of the path, with a lot of construction work happening, so there was more limited space than usual and it was rather busy, but we managed to find one near the top of the car park. We paid for a couple of hours of parking via credit card at the machine.

Slight side rant - this is where Scotland lags behind places like the US and Canada in road trip preparedness, IMO; we are used to finding large and free car parks with facilities like loos in those countries, but in Scotland you’re charged for it and there are no facilities whatsoever. At least the parking fee is paying for the car park to be upgraded - but I think lack of public toilet access in general needs to be addressed, if you’re going to try to cater for more tourists.

Rant over and we started to climb. The view was good whichever way you looked.

I am a wimp who doesn’t love heights and can get headaches at higher altitudes, so when I realised the more formal path further up was closed off for construction and people were having to navigate the muddy hill beside it instead, I decided to find a rock to perch on and wait while DH ventured further up.

I quite enjoyed people watching (and dog watching) from my spot; from there I could also see people following DH into the mud as if he knew where he was going, the fools!

When he eventually made his way back to me, we started back downhill, taking the opposite fork in the path from our route up.

In another example of Scotland’s changeable weather, it rained for about a minute after this picture was taken! By the time we were almost back to the car park, the sky was blue again.

Back in the car, we drove up to the next viewpoint and while I remember reading the tourist information signs around the car park, I can’t remember what they said. It may have related to the highland clearances, because I know I read something about those at one stop. The view was spectacular again anyway, in both directions. You could see over to the other islands, including Raasay in the distance.

Our next stop was Lealt Gorge and Lealt falls. Again a lot of the car park was under construction and it was busy, but we managed to find a space. (We were generally lucky on that front, apart from once the following day.)

There was a small donation box near the falls that explained the upgrade efforts were community funded, they’d also put in paths and fencing, so I dropped in a donation (so apparently I don’t mind donating, I just don’t like feeling forced to pay!).

Kilt Rock was our next stop and here, most excitingly, I spotted a seal swimming in the sea! On a sunny day, the sea is clear enough to spot wildlife. No chance of photos though.

There are dinosaur fossils in this area, but unfortunately the small museum dedicated to these was closed due to COVID.

The last few stopping points were relatively close together but our next stopping point was a bit further on round the road - we stopped to get a view of the Quiraing.

We had some brunch bars and water in the car, so had a small snack break here. It was a lovely interlude, and I was pleased throughout our trip to have so much opportunity to see the quintessentially Scottish purple heather in bloom.

I think there was meant to be another point which would have allowed us to get closer to the Quiraing, but unfortunately we missed that.

No matter; after driving around the peninsula, with its spectacular views of the sea, and starting back south again, we stopped instead to see Flora Macdonald’s grave.

We also found this one in the other part of the cemetery, which I hadn’t realised was there when we stopped.

Unfortunately the small museum about life on Skye was again closed.

After passing through Uig, we turned off the main road again for our final stop of the day - a visit to Fairy Glen.

Again, there was construction happening at the car park, I think I should have worked that theme into the title of this trip report!

As much as I love seascapes, I think this was my favourite of the stops, as it was quite unlike anything I’d seen before. I think I expected to see a hobbit!

You’ll see from the last few pics that the sky had taken a tur for the grey again, so we decided to call an end to the site seeing for the day, and head back to the hotel for a nap and a shower before dinner. The food recap will follow in part 2!