From Castles To Crofts

We've seen some pretty grand castles on this trip. We've walked where the Scottish elite walked, where battles were fought, and exquisite gardens were planted. It is time we mixed things up a bit and saw how the peasant folk lived. 

Our first outing of the day is to the Skye Museum of Island Life. This museum is an open-air village that is going to give us an idea of how the crofters lived 100 years ago. A croft is a small farm worked by a tenant. When building their houses, the crofters had to use what natural resources were available. Stone was used to build walls up to three feet deep and reeds were used for the thatched roofs. Skye is mostly a treeless island so the only wood, to hold up the thatched roof, had to come from shipwrecks off the coast. Side Note: Thatching is a dying art, and it is now becoming very difficult to find an experienced thatcher.

Flora MacDonald
She is famous for saving Bonnie Prince Charles life after the Battle of Culloden.
She dressed him up as her maid and put him on a ship back to France.

Who knew there were so many different breeds of sheep?

We stopped for lunch in Portree
Capital and largest town in Skye

Traveler Dave is showing us the proper way to have tea. 
The pinkie in the air and he has put jam on his biscuit. 
He will follow up with putting butter on top of the jam. 
This is totally the opposite of what we do here in the states

In case we got too comfortable hanging with the common folk, another castle was on the agenda. Of course, no day in Scotland can be complete without getting to see a castle. We are off to see Dunvegan. If you remember, Dun (said doon) means fort. Fort of the Vegans? It is the oldest continuously inhabited castle in Scotland and has been the ancestral home of the Clan MacLeod for 800 years. 

The castle was ok, maybe I've gotten a little jaded with my castles, but I really enjoyed the gardens.  Unlike Dunrobin, these gardens were a bit wilder, they were not as structured.  There were multiple trails that wandered through the grounds.

Dunvegan

Finally, a proper waterfall

And then there were two proper waterfalls!