Tag Archives: Kilt Rock

A Scotland Adventure – Part 5, The Old Man of Storr on the Isle of Skye

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Hello, and welcome back to your annual story time of Ben and Sarah’s international adventures! Keeping with the tradition of the last few years, Sarah and I visited with her family, this year going back to Scotland.

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Saturday, 28-Dec-2019

 

On our first full day in Skye we went searching for The Old Man of Storr.

The old man is old – I don’t know how old rock pillars are, but they’re probably extremely old, right?  Millions of years?  Yeah, that seems right… and Wikipedia confirms it – something around 2.8 billion years old.  Which kind of seems too old to me… but then again, I’m not a geologist, so I don’t really know.

The Old Man of Storr is old, let’s just roll with that.

The Old Man of Storr is also rainy, we learned.

 

As all piled out of the van at the parking lot, and immediately grabbed all the rain gear we could find before heading into the mist and rain.

As we climbed higher, the rain kept getting worse – to the point that Bill and Henry had to turn around to protect their camera equipment.  Sarah, Leah, Greta and I powered onward and upward though, continuing on as the rain turned from “rain” to “Bleak”, and then went through “Dreak” and even into “Lashing” at one point.  It was impressive… but thanks to the waterproof phone, I was able to get some pretty excellent pictures!

We sort of saw the Storr, but only barely.  Still, absolutely worth the adventure, in my book.

 

After turning around and coming back to the warm van, we moseyed onward toward Kilt Rock for a quick peak at the waterfalls, before heading back into town to dry off and warm up!

 

A Scotland Adventure – Part 1, the overview!

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Hello, and welcome back to your annual story time of Ben and Sarah’s international adventures! Keeping with the tradition of the last few years, Sarah and I visited with her family, this year going back to Scotland.

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From Saturday, 21-December, 2019 all the way through to Saturday, 04-Jan, 2020

 

Part 1 – The overview, and photo highlights

The general framework of the trip is detailed below; we didn’t come into the trip with any major plans or goals, we were really looking forward to the time to relax after the busyness of 2019. It’d been a pretty amazing year, full of huge amounts of growth… but with that growth had come a number of challenges that left us fairly drained.

A visit to the Highlands was exactly what the doctor ordered.

 

Quick summary of our trip to Scotland!

  • Leave Portland on Saturday, 21-December-2019
  • Get stuck in San Francisco due to a delayed flight, and stay overnight at the super-posh Grand Hyatt while also getting to walk around the city and visit my cousin
  • Arrive in Scotland on the 23rd… but unfortunately without our checked bags
  • Explore Aberdeen for two days (Tuesday and Wednesday), getting to see the Art Museum, attend the midnight mass at St. Maccars, and even watch dolphins jumping in the surf outside of town
  • Drive to the Isle of Skye, staying overnight at the BenLeva Inn on Loch Ness. We don’t see Nessie… but we do have a full can of Irn Bru (a type of soda) vanish, leaving only the pierced and empty can…
  • We spent three full days on Skye, and had an excellent time exploring and photographing everything we could find. Some major adventure points were:
    • We hiked up to the Storr (in the rain)
    • Explored the town of Portree, and ate some extremely good Cullen Skink
    • hiked the Quiraing route from the parking lot down to the town of Flogetty
    • Walked out to the Fairy Pools
  • Back in Aberdeen, we spent a day touring around the countryside, seeing standing stones and other amazing points of interest.
  • We spent another day back in Aberdeen exploring the city – seeing Greta’s office, visiting shops, and walking through some amazing museums