Lewis, Harris, Skye

A slow start, on a sunny day. Drove to Tarbert, and suddenly by the side of the road, we both saw an enormous wingspan - a white tailed sea eagle! Huge excitement. Not quick enough to get a pic. We stopped en route on a hillside for a bit of quiet time.

In Tarbert, we parked at the Distillery for a whisky tour. A hilarious guide took us through the distillation process, with tastings. Lesley, being the driver of the day, took her whisky samples away in tiny bottles. (N drank one and bottled two.) The sad news was that the distillery, set up 10 years ago to provide much needed jobs on the island, has made big redundancies and has stopped whisky production for now. It seems there's a world-wide drop in whisky purchasing. One bottle costs a whopping £75. We didn't buy any.

After making our own ham and cheese sandwiches in the van, (plus a sneaky sausage roll from a deli) we got in the long queue for the ferry that goes from Tarbert to Skye - our last ferry in the tour of the Hebrides. 

It was on time and we were one of the first to board. Nic went outside with binoculars to admire the tiny marina, and then look for cetaceans but none appeared.

Lesley read. Arriving in Skye, it felt very different. More trees, less of a rugged lunar landscape, more domesticated than the other islands. 

Booked into the Camping & Caravanning Club campsite by a loch for our first night on Skye. Pasta and perhaps a whisky sample.