Leon Turnbull Photography

I arrived at the House of Bruars around noon. This is a strange place. It is a big fancy high-end mall out in the middle of nowhere. There are no big towns around anywhere close, and yet it is a very busy place. How odd!

There is an easy hike here to a couple of waterfalls. It was around noon, and sunny by now when I started this hike, but God really blessed me by providing clouds as I got up to the waterfalls. This allowed me to take some good photos of these falls. Thank you Lord! Maybe it is just Scotland/Ireland. I don’t think this could have happened in California (well, it has happened in CA, but not very often).

The upper falls is very hidden with no good view of it from the trail. I scrambled down off trail to try to find a closer viewpoint. This was the first off trail scrambling I did in Scotland. I found a much better viewpoint, though it was still somewhat obscured. Getting to the creek level would have been great, but it was out of the question. Unless you are a canyoneer. I saw some people rappelling down this waterfall when I got down to my spot (not shown in the photo – obviously). Anyhow, it was still a better view than from the trail.

I ate lunch at the fish n chips place at the mall afterwards. It was a little bit embarrassing when I went to pay because I could not figure out the weird Scottish change and how much I needed. The Scottish restaurant owner with a very strong accent had to pick the change out of my hand, laughing at me. Oh well.

Also weird here was that I could not figure out where the restrooms were. I did not see any sign for “toilets” (as is elsewhere in Scotland). I asked someone and he said it was just inside the store. So I went into the store, looked around, and I could not see the restrooms or any sign for them anywhere. I walked around and around and finally found them, and there was this sign: CLOAKROOM. That’s it! Oh my goodness! I have never seen that word used for restroom before. I guess this is what rich people call restrooms? Ahh!

Easter Sunday. It was a rainy morning but the rain did not last long as I drove back from Isle of Skye to Edinburgh. I had to pick up my  family at the airport in the evening. The rest of the vacation we would all be together. Along the way back to Edinburgh, I would see more waterfalls (of course!).
There were two waterfalls in Scotland I really wanted to see but did not get a chance to: The Falls of Glomach. This is a 12 mile hike, and I just did not have time to do an all day hike. There is a shorter version of the hike I was hoping to do, but the road to this other trailhead was closed. Strike one. Plodda Falls was also high on my list, but this was just way too far out of my way. Strike two. Instead of these, I went to the Falls of Foyers at Loch Ness. I did not see any monsters at Loch Ness except for the sheep grazing at the end of the lake. The small ones are especially scary. They look cute but they are deadly. Kidding!

It is a long drive to the Falls of Foyers, but it was worth it. It is a very beautiful falls, and monster high at 203 ft. tall. It is a short and easy hike if you do it correctly. However, I did not see the sign (which said “to the falls”), and I went the wrong way. Doh. I ended up going most of the way down the mountain towards the lower falls (which is just a very small one), and then had to climb all the way back up the mountain to the big waterfall. I had my Easter Sunday service at the viewpoint of the waterfall, reading the resurrection passage from my Bible. It was a wonderful morning. Day 3 Part 2 coming soon.

It was a very easy hike up to the Falls of Rha in Uig. It is about as easy and short of a hike as you can possibly do. Along the way I encountered dogs barking at me, and a mama and baby cow. And at the end of the hike? A very pretty two tiered waterfall. Pure, raw beauty.

After this I went to Fairy Glen. Fairy Glen is the most unique and interesting place I visited in Scotland, and much unlike anything I have seen in California. This is what I pictured Scotland to be like in my head, but I only found it here at Fairy Glen. The area consists of these fascinating little rolling green hills all over the landscape, big green mounds with steep slopes. The highlight is one hill with a castle like looking rock on top of it. You can climb to the top of this rock by squeezing through a very narrow spot. I had to take off my pack to get through it. I was in such a tight spot, I needed help from another lady to get it off my back. Eek! On top, the views of the surrounding country side are stunning. You feel like you are on top of Scotland.

Fairy Glen is a very busy place. I hiked the mile and a bit from my lodge to the trailhead along the road. I am so glad I did this because the road is crazy narrow (single lane!) and very busy. It was a big mess of cars trying to get past each other on the narrow turnouts. Well, I took photos and video of Fairy Glen, but I did not realize my iPhone storage was full. It did not tell me! When I got back to the hotel I realized I had no photos or video. I decided to go back to Fairy Glen in the evening after clearing up space on my phone. This time I drove to the trailhead. Since it was later (almost sunset), there were not as many people and there was no traffic on that crazy road. I did the short hike again and took more video. It was far more enjoyable as well, with much less people on the trail. This time, the video saved, and when I got back to the hotel I transferred the video from my phone to the storage device that I bought for this trip. However … the stupid thing corrupted my video! I was so mad about this! I did not lose all my video, but it seems I did lose some video of Fairy Glen, and also some from Steall Falls and Falls of Rha. I have not gone through it all yet, but definitely some was corrupted. For the rest of the vacation, I had another backup plan to save video from my iPhone. I’m just glad I realized this early on. How on earth can something like that corrupt your files? Unbelievable.

Day 2 on the Isle of Skye, I drove down to the Fairy Pools first. This is an interesting area with a few small waterfalls and definitely worth seeing. I did not think so at first, however. The creek had low flow (as all the creeks were), and I anticipated this particular area would be lame and uninteresting, not even worth taking any photos. I also thought all the waterfalls here were less than 20 ft. high. WRONG AND WRONG. I found two very pretty 30 ft. high falls, and even at low flow they were both very beautiful and interesting. There were a few other smaller falls as well. I highly recommend seeing the Fairy Pools.

One thing about Scotland you will notice that is unique and not something you will see in California: the SHEEP! You will see sheep everywhere, including the middle of the road. There are millions of them in Scotland (not an exaggeration). I could not get down to the bottom of Lealt Falls (not Mealt) the previous night because of the sheep. The only way down to the bottom is along a cliff, and there were quite a few sheep there blocking my way. Going past the sheep on the edge of a cliff: that would not have been very smart, and probably quite dangerous (for me and them).

As I was photographing this waterfall at Fairy Pools, a sheep came down to the creek. It did not see me there. When it did see me, it totally freaked out, trying to scramble away from me and across the very rocky creek. I thought it was going to take a header into the creek, but it managed to regain its footing and then calmed down when it realized I was just a friendly hiker.

After the Fairy Pools, I hiked to nearby Eas Mor Falls. It is a short but very steep climb up to this waterfall. Why did I think all my hikes in Scotland were going to be flat and easy? At the top of the hill is a beautiful 154 ft. high waterfall across the valley. I am not sure if humans can get to the bottom of it, but I did see a sheep down there. I would have tried but did not think it was worth the effort because of the low flow in the creek. Still it was quite nice.

Carbost Burn Falls is a nice roadside waterfall that was much easier getting to the bottom of than I anticipated. I also found a lower 20 ft. falls down there as well. Surprises are good! I will be sharing all these pics eventually, so no worries about that. The weird thing about Carbost Burn Falls, was that there was someone camping at the top of the waterfall along the road. Why would you camp here?? Why not camp down at the bottom of the falls, off the road, and in a far nicer area? Also, I could not figure out where the campers were! Their car was parked here along the road, and there was no one around. There are no hiking trails here. Where did they go? Such mysteries envelop my little brain.

In the evening, I had another grand adventure. Day 2 Part 2 coming up….

On Good Friday, in the evening, I drove back down from Uig to see some more waterfalls, making my way up the east side of Skye. I found that all of the waterfalls that I saw in Scotland (and Ireland) had very below average flows. This is disappointing. For mid April, they all should have had high flow. A couple were completely dry. A few were just trickling. Most of them (thankfully) had decent flow  (but nonetheless, still below average). Why is this? Unlike California, I believe Scotland is in the midst of a drought. It seems they had another below average winter there this year (and I know 2018 was below average as well). It is unfortunate that I had to go there during a drought when I should be exploring California which has an above average winter (but no worries, I will be doing much more CA exploring this year).

My final destination for the evening was the waterfall I was most looking forward to seeing on this trip: Mealt Falls, 180 ft. high. This is the most dramatic and magnificent waterfall in all of Scotland, dropping off a cliff directly into the ocean. It did not really live up to my high expectations.

Here is the thing about Mealt Falls: There is literally one and only one spot to view and photograph the waterfall. It is also a very popular destination. What does this mean? WAIT YOUR TURN! I waited a long time for all the people coming here to disperse and be done with taking photos. One particular group of people just would not leave, taking far too many selfie photos and being rather annoying and inconsiderate to everyone else. Eventually I got fed up waiting for this group and it was getting late, so I barged in beside them, into the melting pot, snagging the one and only viewing spot and set up my tripod. If you do not have a very tall tripod, you cannot take photos of this waterfall properly. I did not have a tall tripod. You cannot stick your camera through the fence bars. I was at a loss how to photograph this waterfall. The only option I had: make the tripod as small as possible, and stick it on top of the fence, holding it as steady and securely as possible with my one hand, while clicking the shutter with the other hand. The problem is that it was extremely windy, so holding the tripod steady was impossible. I just hoped I got in one decent photo of this waterfall. I did manage to get one decent photo (and only one decent photo – but one is enough).

I was initially going to come back here on Easter Sunday morning for sunrise, but I decided against it for a few reasons: one, it was supposed to rain Sunday morning, so I would not get a good sunrise shot anyway; two, the road up to Mealt Falls is one of those crazy narrow ones, and I did not feel like driving it a second time; and three, I just did not feel like this waterfall was worth coming back to. I was not that impressed because the flow was a bit low and there is only the one small spot to view it. In the rain, it would have been pretty much impossible to photograph it. I decided to go to other places on Easter Sunday. Even so, I had a lovely time on Friday evening at Mealt Falls.