My husband and I are leaving the end of the week for a trip to Scotland and Ireland.
We have hotels and B&B's booked in Oban, Inverness and Edinburgh (2 nights at each place). We thought about going to the Isle of Mull, but I've heard a lot of people recommend the Isle of Skye. Has anyone been to both? How would you compare them? We like quiet, uncrowded places. Would that apply to either or both? We like to walk and will have a car. Mull would be easy to get to from Oban. And we could spend an entire day there. If we did Skye it would probably be on our way from Oban to Inverness, so we would have less time there.
And then what should we try to see from Inverness?
We've been to Edinbugh before and are looking forward to spending 2 more days there.
Our family spent two weeks in Scotland two summers ago. We based one week right on Loch Ness, about 15 miles from Inverness. Beautiful area! We did a day trip to the Isle of Skye, which was a highlight for me. I can't compare to the Isle of Mull since we didn't go there... sorry. We probably ended up only being on Skye four hours or so... enough to let me know I'd like to go back for a few days. But the drive to and from was part of the experience. The area of Skye that we chose to drive to was extremely quiet and uncrowded.
You might enjoy my blog (trip report) about our week and I also have some photos posted:
We spent our second week just outside of Edinburgh, and enjoyed that a lot too.
Have a great trip, and hope you'll come back and share some experiences with us when you get back. (We are actually leaving for Ireland-- eight days-- in about 2-1/2 weeks... we haven't been there before, so we're looking forward to the experience.
Kathy, Thanks for the prompt response and the welcome! You may be surprised that I felt I knew exactly who you were when I saw your Id, because I was just reading your blog about Scotland. I saw your pictures too. Your trip sounded wonderful. How did you manage to be able to take so much time to travel-especially these days with travel so expensive. (I know it was expensive in 2004 also)
I am really excited aobut going to scotland and wish we could spend more time there, but we have never been to Ireland, so felt we had to go there. When we first planned 2 weeks in Ireland and Scotland, it sounded like plenty of time. Now that I am looking at the itinerary and dates, I'm wishing we had more time. How long did it take you to drive to Skye from your cottage?
We loooved Isle of Skye and I had often heard before going there that it was one of the most beautiful places on earth.Ofcourse my ancestors come from there ,so I am a bit prejudiced ,tho dh enjoyed it as much as I did.
We enjoyed our whole trip to Scotland and we saw a great deal of it ,but Isle of Skye was one of the highlights and main reason we went.We also really enjoyed Findhorn as we have long been fans of Esalen in Big Sur so had always wanted to visit the UK version.We also had a spectacular drive to Isle of Skye ,an enchanting rainbow at our first look at Loch Ness and also enjoyed driving along the east coast of Scotland ( did not expect it to be so pretty).
Sorry , I can't do the comparison of Mull and Skye for you,but I would not miss Isle of Skye.We had mostly sunny weather when we were there in September which made it especially nice as most of my trips to UK have been rainy.
Thanks for your message too, and I'm glad you had already found your way to my info.
I went back and looked at the blog about our trip to the Isle of Skye (Wednesday). We were on the southern side of Loch Ness and the road is just a single lane much of the way to Fort Augustus... meaning slow (but very scenic). We stopped a couple of times. And then we decided to take the "long" way to the island (that involved taking a small ferry) instead of the fast route by the new bridge. Bottom line is that we left at 8:45 am and got back at 7 pm.
I just looked at www.mappy.com and tested the route from Foyers (where we were) to Broadford (first major village we came to on Skye). The website says 2 hours and 6 minutes, and the route involves going over the bridge. I'd say to add at least 25% to that for slow traffic, plus any time for stops. (There are definitely places you'll want to stop and look, even if just to take a photo and maybe more.)
About how we were able to take our long trip... I'll fill you in. I worked for a fairly young high tech company in a management role several years ago-- was there for 7 years as VP of Human Resources. Although I left to go to another company in a similar role, I did own stock in the high-tech company. A few years ago they went public. I didn't become a millionaire (which I would have, if I had stayed... but don't go there!), but I came into an unexpected amount of money, enough that we could take two years off. Some people might buy a bigger/better house or save for retirement or buy a vacation place-- we decided we wanted to spend an extended time away. It was a good time for me to make a change career-wise and consider what I want to do forward-going. And it was the ideal time to take our daughter out of school for a year. (She was away for her 6th grade year.)
We rented our house while we were gone, which basically covered our mortgage payment and expenses back at home. And we did our trip mostly the slow travel way-- staying in rental places and cooking lots of our own meals, which made the 14 months much more economical.
I appreciate your interest-- and I hope you have a wonderful trip. I'll tell you something-- 14 months was not even enough. There will always be something new to experience, and then (as it sounds like you know), there's something about going back to places that you already know and love.
Thanks Traveler for the information. We will put Skye on our list to visit.
Kathy, Thanks for the clarification. I envy you being able to travel in Europe for such an extended time. I have lived in Europe and visited many times. I love Europe--all parts of it. I am working on learning Polish, now as we go to Polenad about once a year.
I'm looking forward to this trip to Scotland and Ireland where the people speak English, though with a funny accent, but that's part of the fun.
I always travel with the idea that we will be back again, so we don't have to see everything in one trip. We don't always get back, but we're not done traveling either.If you would like to see some of my pictures they are on this site: http://webpages.charter.net/jriehl/travels/travels.htm
Well, if you have a car in Inverness, for a quintessential Scottish site, go to Balnuaran of Clava, also known as Clava Cairns. ( http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=1119 use the map function on that page to get an excellent traveling map) Combine it with a visit to the battlefield of Culloden, which has a very nice visitor's facility.
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