Day 9 - July 15

Left The Old Inn after quick breakfast … it was pouring rain.  Made our way back to Broadford and stopped for a relaxing coffee shop we visited our first day on the Isle of Skye. We decided to alter our plans to visit two Brochs in Glenn Beag, and instead, we took the bridge to Kyle of Lochalsh enroute to Eilean Donan castle.  Interesting fact this castle laid in ruins for 200 before its then new owner in 1912 dedicated 20 years to restore it.  Today it is arguably the most photographed castle in the Scotland.  Very interesting walking through the castle and seeing the history thought the centuries.  

Like many of these castles. They were built in stages, quite often by different owners. The self-guided tour took us through the lower outer areas and then led inside to the great hall, bedrooms and kitchen area. Unfortunately, most of these castles do not permit photography, so you are left to memories or any on-line photos to remember the sites.




Since the weather wasn’t cooperating, we decided to skip our hike today and stay dry in the car.  We headed up the shore of Loch Ness to Inverness .. final destination, the Culloden Battle field. This was a somewhat scenic drive, given the off/on rain and grey skies, but we enjoyed it just the same.  We stopped shortly at Urquhart Castle and took some photos from the car park.  

Finally made it to Culloden after a brief zip through downtown Inverness – the only direct route.  Our 1 hour journey was well worth it when we arrived at the Battle of Culloden Visitor center.  Here we spent roughly an hour touring through the elaborate exhibits, which chronicled the years and months leading up to and during the Jacobite rebellion.  The displays were interesting in that they had long corridors which described the key situations down the center, with British and Jacobite perspectives on the walls on either side. There was a short movie of the battle near the end – Wow! – and then an exhibit of armaments recovered from archaeological digs and archives. 




Outside, we walked the battlefield to see where it all took place.  They had lines of red flags indicating the British line and off in the distance, blue flags of the Scottish line.  

Curiously, the lines were not parallel to one another.  This probably added to the failure of the Scottish, as they were very unorganized and after firing their initial shots, they charged at from different positions.  The terrain would have been very difficult to run across and they were easy prey to the 3 lines of British gun lines.

We left the center and headed back the way we came and an hour later arrived at Kintail Lodge. The lodge had a table reserved for us by the window and we enjoyed a lovely dinner and bottle of wine to end the day.