My Muse's Musings

(The Boat House at Dunvegan) I didn’t want to leave Skye without sharing some of the pictures I took of our seal boat trip we took at Dunvegan Castle and of the surrounding area of Skye.  First the seal boat trip. (The shoreline, remember this is a sea inlet.)                                                  (This gull wasn't at all interested in us)                (These are common seals and we learned there only about 2000 of them left IN THE WORLD)                                     ...

We didn't get to spend nearly as much time on Skye as we'd have liked.   Portree is the major town on Skye. At one time it was called Kiltraglen.  In 1540 King James V sailed into the harbor with a fleet of warships demanding the island lords support. The name was changed to Portree which comes from the Gaelic Port-an- Righ which means Kings Port. Bonnie Prince Charlie stayed in what was MacNabs Inn at the time and which is now the Royal Motel. He bade Flora MacDonald, and Scotland, good-bye from there in 1746. In the early 1700 overpopulation and poverty forced the citizens of Portree onto ships bound for America. Sir James MacDonald developed the port as a fishing port and brought new industry into the town preventing a larger exodus. In 1846 the potato famine hit Portree followed by the clearance and a large part of the population once again boarded ships for America and Australia. Today it is a thriving town built around the harbor that has bee...

I know that Eilean Donan is the most photographed castle in Scotland but I believe Urquhart Castle probably comes in a close second. It was packed the day we went and I had to break my rule about not taking pictures of people in order to photograph it. Perched atop a jutting finger of land that points out into  Loch Ness, it triggers thoughts of romance, scorcery, and of course Nessie. I did look for Nessie. I just couldn’t resist. But I have to say, if she's there, she's picked the pretties loch in Scotland in which to reside. The water was so blue it hurt to look at it. It is thought that St. Columba stayed at Urquhart Castle on his way to Inverness. Of course at that time, around 600, the castle would have been a Pictish fort. This is a Trebucket, a medieval catapult, created to fling the stone balls you see lined up behind it at the walls of the castle and anyone within.  The precise time the castle was built isn’t known but it is believed that the Durwar...