Loch Dunvegan

Cloudscape over MacLeod's Tables.

Our plans went a bit awry today. The roads in our little corner of Skye are snow free, with the only snow being on the mountain tops, so we thought we'd be ok going a little further afield. Big mistake, huge! The first few miles towards Portree were fine, but as the road climbed towards the Storr, it got whiter and whiter with inches of snow across the road, and we were following tracks made by other vehicles. After a stressful hour, we eventually made it safely to Portree. 

We'd got this far, so we carried on and headed towards Dunvegan, and the roads seemed better on that side of the Isle. We had planned on going further, but it had taken us hours to get here and we didn't fancy venturing off the main roads. Still, the views of Loch Dunvegan were fabulous, we found a nice cafe for coffee and went for a lovely walk in the hills behind the village. We climbed up to the Duirinish Stone - a modern standing stone erected by the villagers in 2000. The 5 ton stone was raised in the traditional way using ropes and a lot of people! The walk finished at the ruined church of St Mary's. The ancient graveyard was fascinating and is the burial place of several chiefs of the Clan MacLeod. We made it home, taking the narrow road around the Trotternish peninsula - at least that way was more or less snow free!