As it was already to late to visit Talisker-Distillery (which I wanted to visit for a tasting and a little „shopping“) we drove on to the Glenbrittle Pools, where we wanted to stay for the night.

We had our second tourist-nightmare of the day when we reached the pools ... maybe it was because of the time of year (we were there for the last time during May 2014) or the „secret places“ are getting more and more touristy ... I think it has to be the second guess, as both the parking places and the path to the pools where in a much „improved“ state ... no more jumping from stone to stone to cross creeks ... now you can walk down with a baby carriage ... a very sad development for such a nice place.

Despite that situation we decided to stay there and sit the tourists out ... as they (as we correctly suspected) would leave for their hotels as the light dimmed and it got cooler and only a couple of campers were left to stay for the night, most of which took their tents for spots up on the hills, not on the parking lot where we planned to stay.

As most people had left, we took our cameras and left for the pools ... and where able to capture another spectacular sunset ... we got really lucky with the weather this year!!!

We climbed out of our sleeping bags really early the next day to drive to the little village (ok, its a little bit of an exaggeration: there are just about 3 houses, a campsite, a hostel and a cementery) named Glenbrittle to climb up „Surr Alasdair“ which is right next to it and the highest summit of the Black Cullins. The path started right behind the campsite and led to the little „Loch an Fhir-bhallaich“ (however that is pronounced) from where we advanced on a route described to us by a hiker we’ve met on the way up. We climbed up a chute full of rocks of all sizes (about 300 meters in height) which wasn’t really fun, was you constantly have to pay attention not to hit your partner with the rocks you made loose. As the weather and more important the visibility got worse the higher we climbed, we had to turn around about 50 meters in height below the summit. The chute was much more fun going down and we surfed al the way down until we reached the little Loch again. Funny thing was, that we met lots of people who were still climbing up despite the weather and visibility getting worse and worse.

As we know from our own experience how long bad weather can last in Scotland, we drove to the Talisker-Distillery with the intention to get hold of a weather forecast. After a little shopping there (and without getting a weather forecast) we left for Portree to look for a B&B (according to Ines, I needed a shower again – she always kept a certain distance from me, don’t know why).

We found a really nice B&B as well as a great restaurant and a weather forecast which wasn’t really great. According to it, bad weather was coming in for the next couple of days ... especially on the west coast where we were. As we were really lucky with the weather so far and because of the fact that we know Scotland with bad weather we decided to turn around the next day and head home ... with a stop in Edinburgh of course.

 

Some impressions: