Roadtrip in Scotland - waterproof tent?!

Day 3 Drop, Drop, Drop…

I wake up with water dropping on my head. Without moving I look around, what is happening?! It’s raining outside and also inside our tent! hahaha, so good! -.-‘

As I sit up, so Marie and Thibaud wake up. We have to get out of here as soon as possible… but first shake the laziness from the body and get the courage to face the Midges! That’s right, they are back, and they are just outside looking for a little hole to get in! Rain does not scare them away!

Ready, steady, go! In few minutes everything is taken back to the car!

What to do next?! We need fuel… so let’s go to Mallaig, a little town in the west coast. Here we had an amazing breakfast!

We also tried to get the ferry from Mallaig to Skye Isle, but found out that we needed a reservation for this, or we can still wait in a que incase someone does not come. As there was already 4 cars waiting we thought it wouldn’t worth wait as the probability of getting a vacancy was very low, so we had to drive a long, long way…

Its about 200km, a little more than 3 hours driving along the lakes and mountains, under this cloudy weather. Time to stop… and there is a castle on the way: Eilean Donan Castle:

Back on the road, soon we arrived in Skye Isle, the most famous island in Scotland! A quick stop in a supermarket in Broadford to get some more food. And we head to a little village called Elgol…

It’s 3 pm and we haven’t had lunch! The landscape is amazing and sooner than we expected we found a pleasant place to stop and have a picnic!

And why not touch a sheep?! Ahahah, Marie tried to… but they ran away!

Back on the road, another half an hour driving to the cost of this small peninsula. At the end of the road, we find a fishing village with about 150 people – Elgol. There are fishermen collecting the tools from a day of work. There is also a cabin where they sell tickets for a boat trip to Loch Coruisk…

little cute house skye isle — Approaching Elgol, Skye Isle – Scotland

We park the car and by trusting our explorer instincts we head left, to walk along the hillside… as we walk, this cliff is getting higher and higher and on the other side there is a multitude of terrain that get’s lost in the horizon. We can no longer see the houses behind us and ahead we are curious to know what exactly are we going to find…

The wind makes the flowers looking like they dance. There are cows and sheep walking freely and the view from here… well it takes my breath away!

cliffs in elgol - skye isle — Elgol, Scotland

We walked for about 2 km and we now start to go downhill… there is a sort of a beach just down there!

There are small pieces of wood sticks everywhere and dry grass to make a campfire!

Looks like we just found the perfect place to spend the night… We only have to walk back to the car to get food, tent, sleeping bags… and coats, it’s windy and looks like the temperatures will be cooler tonight…

Within 2 hours we are settled in the coast of this cliff, pretty far from everything, without any signal in our mobile phones! We lit up a campfire and cheered to a wonderful spot we found to camp!

In this most unlikely place to find someone, here comes a group of Scottish people who apparently come here to fish every so often! We invited them to join us around the campfire: we roasted some chorizo and surrounded by these happy Scottish accents, we enjoyed another beautiful sunset.

skie isle - around the fire — Skie Isle, Scotland

The wind hasn’t stopped blowing so the sky change colour very quickly, and dark clouds are on the way… our friends leave us before the rain get’s here, as they still have to walk 2 km back to the little village.

So, what about us?! What do we do next?

Quicker then expected we feel the first drops of rain.. and as we turn around it’s already dark! We hide under a rock on the hillside and had dinner there. It’s raining more heavily now. The tent isn’t completely waterproof – we learnt this from this morning experience… but it’s too late to go back to the car: it’s too cold and with all the rain we will end up soaking wet. It’s safer to stay here, we are away from the wind! We hope it won’t rain too much for too long, so we started taking turns to shake the water away that was accumulating on the top of the tent.

After little more than 1 hour, the rain calms down.. so we go to the tent!

Finally warm inside my sleeping bag and so tired! It’s 23:50.. and just before falling asleep quickly, the last thing I remember thinking of is “My birthday is in 10 minutes…”

ZZzzzz