According to Google Maps, it would take 5.5 hours to drive from Edinburgh to Portree in Skye. Relying on public transport it took a little longer than that for us, taking all day to get to Kyle of Lochalsh and then a bus in the morning to finish off the trip – call it a day and a half all up.

It wasn’t all bad though, some of the views from the train being quite stunning.

Aberdeen

One of the reasons it took so long to get to Portree was that the schedules of each of the component legs just didn’t marry up. Given the gaps, we elected to have a look around Aberdeen town centre.

Inverness

With an hour in Inverness we elected to have a meal at the Belhaven Pub near the station to ensure we weren’t late for the train departure.

Overnight at The Kyle

And then we were within eyeshot of the Isle of Skye. We elected to stay overnight at The Kyle Hotel where I’d stayed with Mum 9 years previously when we’d visited the Isle of Skye.

Bus to Portree

The train line finishes at Kyle, so we took the bus to Portree instead.

Portree

The biggest town on Skye is Portree, home to a couple of Co-op supermarkets, the only ones on the island. A network of local bus routes sporadically run allowing the locals to go shopping, the bus stop outside the larger of the supermarkets visited by each of the buses we took.

Cuillin Hills Hotel

The Cuillin Hills Hotel where we’d booked to stay for the week was around a 13 minute (according to Google) walk from the centre of town, visible across the harbour from the main road.

Scorrybreac Circuit

On the first day we decided to do the Scorrybreac Circuit, the start of which we’d passed on the way to the hotel.

We were about to pass the large park-like clearance on our left when I glimpsed a map of New Zealand on the park bench so we had to investigate.

It turns out that the Scorrybreac Circuit runs through the headlands which were the family homestead of the Nicholson family, and the park bench in question was donated by the Nichols clan in New Zealand.

The path meandered pleasantly along the waters edge, the branches of the trees meeting above the trail making a nice canopy. The path wasn’t too muddy and we made good time.

The tide had come in enough to separate the Black Island from the mainland. It turned out that Bonnie Prince Charlie had left from this point dressed as a woman in his return to France after the disastrous battle at Culloden.

Around the corner the path became a little more challenging, gaining elevation and becoming a little more muddy. Looming above us to the left were cliffs with sea hawks apparently nesting in the cliffs. We saw some wide winged birds staying aloft without flapping their wings – surfing the updrafts – but I wasn’t sure whether they were sea hawks or some other species.

As the path turned inland, it started to switch back onto itself as it climbed steeply up the hill to a lookout high above the sea. Below we could make out one of the many salmon farms offshore, and a different path split off the Circuit and headed out over the neighbouring farmland past sheep and cows beyond the hills further along the coast.

We paused on the park bench overlooking the vista for lunch and to say hi to a couple walking their dog, and then continued along the path. It was much less steep and eventually left the overgrowth into farmland on the back of the path.

Though it was only a warm up, the steepness of the hill reminded me of how unfit I was. Ange had made the comment that even though she couldn’t see me on the steepest part of the hill track through the trees and undergrowth, she could still hear me ahead of her because of the wheezing and puffing. Hmph!

Old Man of Storr

The next day we took the bus to the new carpark at the base of the Old Man of Storr. The Old Man is a rocky hill in the shadow of the Storr which is a plateau in the middle of the Trotternish peninsula.

The Old Man was apparently created from a rockfall from the Storr and is one of the most famous walks on the island. The carpark construction going on is an attempt to alleviate the street parking in the height of the summer.

We had checked out the bus time table and saw that we had three hours to get up and back which should not be a problem when the round trip was supposed to take two hours. Even with my low base fitness, we figured we should be alright.

The early going was on good paths with an insistent gradient which allowed you to concentrate on the views without needing to pay much attention to your footing. The high fences and gates made sense as they were to keep deer out.

I never figured out whether the deer were in the uphill section and they were keeping away from the road below or being kept away from the heights above us.

At the top of the section the path joined another, continuing up the hill over a slight rise into a dip. Any positive thoughts generated from the pause in uphill progress were stopped when we saw the what was ahead.

Some workers were creating a rock staircase up the side of the hill, the steepest parts already finished, with the flat parts between steps to be filled with aggregate later. At the bottom of the hill the path through the fence was in the process of being filled, a mechanical digger clearing the path for the bags of aggregate to be spread.

We inched around the digger which almost blocked the path and made good use of the steps. Having good solid rocks beneath us ensured we could concentrate on breathing rather than trying to figure out where to put our feet, so we made good progress again… until the steps ran out and the regular path was roped off to allow workers to create more stone steps.

This meant we had to walk through less firm track churned up by previous track walkers. We did our best goat impressions and made our way back to where the track went and went along reasonably flat track to the base of the Old Man, checking out the other promontory stone structures.

We had made such good progress that Ange wanted to try and replicate the picture we’d seen in the hotel. I was more worried that we’d use up the extra hour buffer before the bus came, but went along.

It was a little disconcerting coming across signs warning not to go any further… from the wrong side! In a couple of cases the “not” was scratched out, or covered in stickers. I couldn’t figure out which path you would have to have taken to come across the signs from the “proper” side, as we had taken the most obvious route up the hill.

We paused for our lunch and then headed around behind the Old Man of Storr, marvelling at the fields of rock from the slide (the cause of the signs – if more rock came down there would be no warning!). The path behind the Old Man towards the Needle was straight from Middle Earth, and a welcome relief from the winds.

The path looped back around, narrow and exposed in parts, but firm enough underfoot. It was with some relief that we retraced our path and headed down the hill. Less strenuous than the route up, still needing to concentrate on path selection until we rejoined the staircase made of stone where the different muscles in our legs reminded us that they weren’t stretched on the way up.

We reached the bottom with about twenty minutes to spare and then proceeded to look for the bus stop. Google Maps had it on the other side of the road about five minutes away so we headed there.

There was nothing at the spot it indicated, so I headed up a little further. Still nothing. I was worried – surely there would be something to show the bus stop? I looked at the printed out bus timetable and it had “Old Man of Storr Carpark” so we broke into a trot and made our way back to where we’d started from. Still no signage or anything. I figured I’d leap in front of the bus – surely that would stop him?

The darkening skies started to spit, delivering on their gloomy promise which had miraculously stayed dry up to that point. Around the corner came the bus, and I stuck out my arm and it pulled to a halt. As we got on board I asked the driver if this was a stop.

He responded that they operate a “Hail and Ride” system where you hail the bus and he would stop. As long as you were on the correct side of the road. Smiling in apology at catching the bus from the wrong side of the road, we made our way to our seats just as the rains really started in anger.

Happy that we’d made the bus and avoided a three hour wait to the next bus (we’d taken note of the phone number of a taxi driver as a back up so we wouldn’t really have to wait three hours in the rain), we headed back to Portree, only pausing briefly to see to a nasty blister on one of my toes from the walk down the hill.

Rain And Wind. And Rain. And More Wind.

We weren’t able to book a tour the next day, and the weather forecast looked dire. So we booked the tour for the next day instead and hunkered down in the room, watching squall after squall roll over the harbour from the hills beyond. The wind buffered the windows and the rain battered the panes all day and all night. Room service and a bath were the only antidotes!

Tour

Donald from Skye Scenic Tours picked us up and dropped us off after the winter tour – always a time efficient way of seeing a lot of the critical sights.

Carbost: Oyster Shed & Talisker Distillery

The sky was still threatening more rain when we caught the small local bus to Carbost. It was more a mini-van than bus, with three locals bestown with shopping from Co-op getting aboard without paying.

My face dropped when the driver said he only took cash, but this being Skye, the driver said he’d wait as I disappeared to the nearby bank to get cash out of the ATM. A return ticket purchased for each of us, we boarded. The driver asked if we were going to the distillery and we said that yes we would be, but after we’d gone to the Oyster Shed for lunch.

He said he’d drop us off just before the Shed at the top of the hill. We’d checked out the route on Google Street View and thanked him profusely for allowing us to avoid that climb, my legs at least still feeling the results of the trip up the Old Man of Storr.

This bus showed us a different side of life on the Island, the bus driver also delivering mail and helping the passengers on and off the bus with their grocery shopping.

I think that the Oyster Shed is primarily a fish retailer with a kitchen bolted on. You order in the main part of the shop, surrounded by industrial levels of fresh fish of a wide array of assorted species. Ange was particularly enamoured by the crab fridge magnet with the legs which wobbled, only £2.50.

The volume of seafood you get at the Oyster Shed certainly lived up to what we’d seen online – definitely good value for money. The outdoor eating area is only partially roofed, so when the heavens opened I was thankful that Ange had chosen a good barrel to eat at.

By the time we’d finished lunch the rain had blown over, and the walk back down the hill to the Talisker Distillery was a pleasant post meal meander. Though there was no footpath, so I had one ear cocked for traffic behind us.

We’d booked our slot on the Talisker Distillery tour and we had a few minutes before it started so had a look around the exhibition.

Megan did a good job with the tour, answering all our questions and walking through the tasting notes for the three varieties we tasted – the Talisker 10 Year, the Talisker Distiller’s Edition and the Talisker Distillery Exclusive.

Neither Ange nor I wanted to drink the full drams, so I made use of the “Drivers Option” which was a cool little hessian bag with little containers for the scotch, so that you could still have a taste in the Distillery but you could also take the rest home to enjoy there.

The only problem with a bus which only runs twice per day is that if you miss the last one you have an expensive taxi trip or an unexpected overnight stay. As a result we made sure we were at the bus stop in good time.

It also meant that we kept a beady eye on the road above Carbost, starting at each white van sighting, and only worrying a little when the bus was a few minutes late.

Dunvegan

We knew that Dunvegan Castle was closed, but there was walk which started in Dunvegan and went near the castle so we elected to take lunch and jump on yet an other bus to check out Dunvegan and the Two Churches Walk.

We got dropped off at Dunvegan village – the bus continued onto the Castle but that would cut the walk in half and spoil any sense of accomplishment. I did make a point of asking the driver where the return bus stop was.

Opposite the starting point of the walk, Ange found an alpaca wool store, selling knitwear as well as alpaca wool. We’d seen sheep throughout our tours and wanderings – the sheep pretty much left to their own devices, each spray painted a particular colour to indicate ownership, but hadn’t seen any alpacas. Ange bought some wool for her knitting, and then we headed back into the cold for our walk.

The two churches referred to by the walk title were the abandoned ruins of St Mary’s Church and the still-in-use Church of Scotland. The trail lead behind the church and along the hillside in the forest.

The trail was unusual for all the walks we’d done on Skye had been exposed and this one was under the canopy of a mature forest. It was unusual for another reason which became apparent as we proceeded.

Periodically we came across “evidence” of fairies, obvious put in place by school children with named fairy doors either high on trunks or nestled in the roots of the trees along the path. There were also little fairy dolls stuck to branches

The path had little piles of logs alongside it in parts, and someone had cut a little picnic area into some of the logs, trunks being converted into seats and a log having seats spliced into it, looking almost like a seesaw, but surprisingly secure.

The path continued through the forest until stopping at a T intersection. The left hand side path lead to the main road and onto the Dunvegan Castle and Gardens. We headed to the gates just in case they were open, but no, the carpark was empty and the gates resolutely closed.

Just in the background beyond the closed and padlocked gates was the top of a tower from the castle. There were parts of the fence which we could have gotten over, but we thought it best to leave Skye by train rather than in a police van, so we headed back to where the path had split and continued on the official path.

The autumn leaves had left a carpet of dappled colour as the path started to climb to the top of the hill. It was slippery in parts and some areas had exposed rock, but it was all very low key after the various walks we’d already done.

Then we reached a gate which lead to more traditional environment: a track through gorse bushes, the canopy of forest gone now and, beyond the gorse, the brown of the bracken covering the hill sides all the way to the horizon.

It wasn’t too long before the path itself seemed to be a stream, with limited footing which wasn’t actually under an inch or two of water. Deep enough to occasionally seep into your shoes and get your socks wet.

We braved our way through though and towards the end of the path we saw the side branch which took us to the Duirnish stone, a stone raised in the traditional method in 2000 to celebrate the millennium.

Ange checked out if the stone had any “Outlander” magic to take us back to 1743. We paused there for some lunch, sheltering out of the wind behind the stone. Then we headed down the hill to the other, ruined church, which turned out be the burial spot for the clan chiefs of the McLeods.

We still had over an hour before our return bus, so we walked through Dunvegan town and then back to the Dunvegan Inn for a tea or a coffee. They were full, but we waited outside and before long we were invited inside out of the cold and enjoyed a lovely cheese board.

Eilean Donan Castle, Pock & Hector’s Bothy

The next day was our last and so we took the bus back to Kyle. We’d arranged for a taxi driver to meet us to take us to Eilean Donan Castle, the most photographed castle in Scotland according to Brian McFadyen.

Brian was awesome: I thought we’d just get him to take us to the castle (which was closed), we’d take a few photos from the shore and then we’d go back to Kyle.

Instead, Brian dropped us off, told us he’d be back in half an hour, came back, took us to a vantage point across the loch, then took us to the starting point of a secret lookout. Finally he dropped our bags off at a café in Kyle so we wouldn’t have to carry them around to the lookout point. Great service, and great value.

Eilean Donan Castle sits on an island where three lochs meet and has featured in many movies. It’s incredibly picturesque, and for Memorial day was lit up with red floodlights. It would have been something to see!

After commenting on the great weather, Brian took us to the secret lookout up the back of Kyle.

The lookout was reached out by a narrow lane which rose up from water level to a the top of a hill which commanded great views sweeping from Loch Alsh past Kyelakin to the Skye Bridge and around to Badicaul. Well worth the climb.

On the way down, Ange found some wild blackberries growing on the side of the road and tried one.

Then we headed to Hector’s Bothy to meet up with Brian and get our bags and to grab a bite before our train ride home.

On the way home we made sure that we sat on the left hand side of the train. Both Brian and the strange guy we’d talked to at the train station as we waited for the train had both given us that same piece of advice and it was true: the landscape reminded us of British Columbia in Canada in parts with the forest reaching down to the water line.

So we didn’t manage to get into Dunvegan Castle or see the Fairy Pools, but I guess it just gives us another reason to come back to Skye.

The post Visiting the Isle of Skye appeared first on etrip.tips.

We were early as usual and enquired whether our room might be ready. The receptionist checked her computer and we smiled when she told us it was. We headed up the stairs and along the hall to our room, checking out the photos of Skye’s wild attractions as we went.

The Room

The room itself was huge – an enormous super king bed with ten pillows/cushions on it taking pride of place. It was two singles pushed together but the mattress was thick enough that we didn’t notice at all.

A full dresser and desk with ample drawer space allowed us to unpack and feel like we were at home, the TV was also huge and pivoted on its frame so we could swivel it around and watch from the round table and two armchairs in the corner.

Because of Covid-19 restrictions, the hotel had removed the £5 room service charge, so dining in-room was an attractive option. If we got the breakfast door hanger filled in and hanging on the door by 3am we could get anything we wanted delivered between 7:30am and 10:00am.

This proved an excellent option when we were heading out early for a tour or catching a bus. The breakfast was included in the room rate so there was no limit to what we could order.

I felt just a little bit bad when the delivery guy puffed his way in having carried the heavy tray all by himself from the kitchen, up the stairs and into the room. They did have little trestle tables that they set up outside the room and rested the tray on while knocking.

Being there for so long allowed us to see those rare incidences when things don’t go perfectly – there were two of these in our stay. One morning there was a knock at the door at 7:30am. We were awake and Ange went to the door to be greeted by the trestle table and a tray of breakfast on it.

She called out after the delivery guy “Excuse me! Hello! We didn’t order breakfast!” The guy came back and didn’t seem too bothered “Well, I can take it away if you like?” I immediately suggested that that wasn’t necessary and that we would take it – I hate to see food wasted and we were awake anyways.

Ange was worried if we took it that someone else would miss out (which would mean that the error was one of wrong room), but the waiter confirmed that it was for our room number, and so we said that we’d take it.

We looked at what the breakfast was and it was what we had previously ordered, so we figured the old door hanger had somehow got back into circulation in error. Seriously, talk about first world problems!! Oh no, our 4 star hotel accidentally delivered a delicious cooked breakfast!

The Bathroom

The bathroom boasted his and hers sinks which Ange loved – no more of my whiskers or toothpaste splatter interrupting her beauty regime. The shower had a rainforest showerhead which I always love, and the bath was the perfect size for luxuriating the aching muscles after one or other of our walks on the island.

……And when the wind blew and the rains came it was decadent to bathe while sipping a wee dram of the local product.

The toiletries were Algotherm and while I didn’t really need the shower cap, shampoo and conditioner it was good to use the shower gel and soap. I figured that the local seaweed probably wasn’t used in the formulations of the products – the gap between high and low tide all around the island was speckled with different species of seaweed, but Algotherm is made in France so they probably used locally sourced macroalgae.

We could elect how often our room was made up which was good – Ange hated the waste of having towels replaced every day, but I was tempted because each time they made up the room we got free bottles of water and shortbread. It’s always good coming home to a clean room!

The View

The view from the room was awesome, a constantly changing vision across the harbour where you could watch the clouds roll up the Loch. There was one day where a storm hit, a constant barrage of wind and rain and even though the window rattled slightly when buffeted by particularly strong gusts, we were perfectly snug all day.

It was a little mesmerising watching the changing light as clouds raced across the sky and the harbour hues melted one into the other – dawn especially striking.

The Food

The hotel had its own Scotch bar, a nook beside the main bar where you could select one or more of the many flavors on offer. The bar itself was off limits due to Covid, but that merely shifted where you needed to drink your drinks.

The picnic tables on the front lawn had online ordering, so if you picked your moment between rain showers and enjoyed the sun, you could use your phone and enjoy a libation while watching the next shower cloud approach across the harbour.

The food was amazing the whole time we were there and the other small hiccup occurred one day when our room service order for lunch didn’t make it to the kitchen. Again, another first world problem: we had to ring again and they sent it up within 20 minutes. Boo hoo!

Staying for a week and having most meals at the hotel, we learned what we liked from the menu and obviously recognised the waitstaff. If I was more of a people person I would have learnt all their names, which is a pity because they were all friendly and lovely, and gave great service.

The leek and potato soup was our first introduction to the restaurant and while I was under the mistaken impression the garnish on top was bacon (more likely deep fried leek), it certainly set the standard for the rest of the meals.

When we asked if there were any recommendations the waiter mentioned that the scallops were fresh and that you could actually watch the scallop boats landing their catch in the port over the harbour.

As good as they were, the star dish for me was actually the starter portion of the mussels, served in a white wine broth and crusty bread. Really good value – there must have been close to a kilo of them for £8.50. We had them a few times while we were there!

Another item we kept coming back to was the burger. Definitely better with the cheese and bacon, it came with a little salad, chips and onion rings. I had fomo with Ange’s fish and chips so obviously had to have that the following night!

Let me pause and reminisce about the sticky toffee pudding. It had quite the range of textures, from the pudding itself, with the obvious toffee sauce, but the ice cream that accompanied it was sandwiched between a biscuit-y topping and some sort of ganache.

The first time I ordered it from room service they asked if I wanted it delivered at the same time as the main or afterwards and I made the mistake of getting it at the same time as the main, so the head of the hot toffee sauce melted the ice cream.

The second time I ordered it I made sure not to repeat the error, and when I said I’d have it later they said that they wouldn’t make it at the same time but just to ring down 10 minutes before I was ready for it and they’d make it and bring it up. Cue the most pompous phone call you have ever heard:

Ring ring.

“Hullo recepetion, how can I help?”

“Uh… I’m ready for my dessert now. Please send up my sticky toffee pudding.”

While we were staying at the hotel we did a tour which offered a hotel pickup and drop off. Now we only arranged to go on the tour a day before it actually left and on that day that we arranged it we didn’t want to leave the hotel because there was a storm: a constant barrage of buffeting winds and squalls of torrential rain.

So, no way of making the ten minute walk into the centre of town to get a sandwich and packet of crisps from the supermarket in town. We asked if the hotel did a takeaway lunch and were told yes, we could get a bagged lunch for £10. So for the £10 each we got a sizeable sandwich, bottle of water, packet of crisps, piece of fruit and a pair of shortbread biscuits, all in a brown paper bag.

Would I go back?

Hell yes! The room was large, the bed was huge and comfortable, the views were gorgeous. The food was delicious. And the friendly staff were the icing on the cake. Very much recommended!

The post Review: Cuillin Hills Hotel, Portree, Skye appeared first on etrip.tips.

It was a bit tricky to find a tour company operating in Skye. Visiting their websites showed that they were all closed, or had no availability, so we assumed that they’d all shut up shop. We were therefore surprised to see a tour bus picking up passengers from the main bus stop in the centre of Portree.

A few emails later and we were booked onto the 6 hour Winter Tour by Skye Scenic Tours. We arranged a hotel pickup/drop off and got the hotel to give us a packed lunch. Sorted!

We got a sizeable sandwich (choices of bacon, lettuce, tomato, ploughmans or salmon), a bottle of water, packet of crisps, piece of fruit and shortbread – perfect for refuelling.

Fairy Pools

Our biggest reason for going with Donald on his Winter Tour was that he visited the Fairy Pools. Even though we had hunkered in our hotel room the previous day as torrential rain was blown in sideways across the island for over 24 hours, we were still hopeful of being able to reach the turquoise pools and waterfalls which were normally visited by over 200,000 people every year.

We pulled into the carpark and the attendant greeted Donald by name and let us know the bad news. The ford which started the walk up to the Pools was over ankle deep. Previous trampers had had to throw their poles and gear across – just too much rainwater collected from the Black Cuillin’s and funnelled to the Brittle River.

Donald was good though, he gave the four of us on the trip the option of going anyway. We looked at each other and eventually agreed that it was probably best for us not to spend the rest of the day with drenched shoes and jeans, and to head a little further down the valley to a “secret spot” Donald knew about. I took the below photo of the Fairy Pools as we went by but it will have to wait until the next time we visit.

The “secret spot” turned out to be visible from the road opposite the Glenbrittle Youth Hostel, so I don’t feel like I’m breaching any confidence in mentioning it here. Lovely waterfall and while the turquoise of the iconic photographs was hinted at rather than saturating the view (suggesting post-photo filters), the white of the rapids, the darkness of the rocks and the brown of the bracken were all very picturesque.

Sligachan

Happy enough with the replacement waterfalls, we headed back to the main road to Portree. At the crossroads, where the Kyle – Portree road met the roads leading to the western most two peninsulas, we stopped for a look at the Old Sligachan Bridge which used to be the only way across the river.

Statues of two iconic hill walkers had just been erected to commemorate Professor Norman Collie and John Mackenzie, first to top many of the peaks on Skye.

It was possible to get public transport to Sligachan but not to the Fairy Pools, so when we had done our research we’d explored getting public transport to Sligachan, then hiking the 7 miles (11km) between the peaks in the Black Cuillins to the Fairy Pools and arranging for a taxi to meet us at the Fairy Pools carpark and take us to the Talisker Distillery in Carbost (£35-£42 depending on which taxi firm you use if you’re interested).

Old Man of Storr

We had previously climbed the Old Man of Storr, so this was just a quick photo stop. It was good to get a perspective on just how tall the climb had been.

Lealt Falls

Donald was a local of the Trotternish peninsular, the eastern of the three fingers which formed the northern part of Skye. As a native Gaelic speaker we marvelled as we could pick out Irish and Welsh elements of his accent – on top of the lilting sing-song Scottish Highland accent of course!

He kept up a steady stream-of-consciousness commentary about pertinent things as we passed – certainly the most value in terms of words per minute of tour time, that’s for sure!

The same rains which made the Fairy Pools unreachable, made for impressive waterfall displays on the Eastern side of Trotternish.

Kilt Rock & Mealt Falls

The wild cliffs stretching in both directions provided excellent views out across to the Isle of Raasay and below the water level, according to Donald, there was a research facility specialising in submarine activities. Apparently an assortment of weird and wonderful naval vessels undertook exercises at various times.

An Coran Beach – Staffin

With some extra time available as a result of not being able to get to the Fairy Pools, I dropped a few subtle hints about maybe being able to see the dinosaur tracks at An Coran Beach.

Everybody seemed to think that was an OK idea, so Donald drove down to the beach. We had researched getting to Staffin on our own, but with there being only three buses per day, it was going to be awkward getting there. As Donald drove us down to the beach I was doubly glad he’d agreed to take us as the road was narrow with lots of blind corners and no safe walking places for pedestrians.

In addition to being convenient and safer, Donald actually knew where the footprints were! While the tide was perfect for finding them, if he hadn’t pointed them out we might have spent hours scouring the beach for their exact location.

The tide on our arrival was perfect: mid tide – where there is enough water to accentuate the prints but not cover them entirely.

Quaraing

We then headed inland climbing up one lane roads which doubled back on themselves like pictures I’d seen of the Swiss Alps. I was glad Donald knew the roads (he’d pointed out his village where he lived on the way) and that it wasn’t snowy or icy.

The views from the top were spectacular: The Quiraing is a landslip on the eastern face of Meall na Suiramach and features truly spectacular views. We stopped at the carpark where the tracks leave from, quite glad we didn’t have the two hours to complete the 6.8km track as apparently it’s classified as ‘Medium’ in length and ‘Hard’ for difficulty.

Fairy Glen

We cut straight across the top of the Trotternish peninsula to Uig (pronounced Ooh-igg) where the ferries departed to the Outer Hebrides, stopping at the local brewery. I was more interested in having lunch and the others made use of the facilities rather than checking out the local products, so we didn’t linger long, heading south out of Uig and then up a valley to the Fairy Glen.

It almost captured the otherworldly feeling of the Quaraing in miniature, with an extreme Middle Earth vibe.

Castle Ewan turned out to be a natural rock formation which looked like an actual castle. Ange braved the high winds, crossing the exposed path to reach the actual rock of the keep. We were there when there were maybe four other people – in the summer with the crowds it would be quite interesting with too many people on the paths potentially jostling for position. If the fairies didn’t get you the drop might!

Some tourists apparently moved the stones to make patterns in the fairy rings, so a sign warned them that the fairies didn’t like that. Apparently the locals spent a lot of time and effort putting the stones back after people had left: exhausting – a truly Sisyphean effort!

St Columba’s Isle

Donald hadn’t really given much guidance in terms of how long we had at each stop, primarily a combination of not needing the Fairy Pools’ 90 minutes and not really lingering at any of the other stops. I imagine if there were more than the four of us then we would have used more time.

Anyway, Donald took us to a couple of places that weren’t on the itinerary to fill in the time. A detour down a farmer’s driveway looking for Highland cattle (“hairy coos” in the local parlance) turned up blank, but we took in the wonders of St Columba’s Island which turned out to be a square burial island reached by a small bridge.

It turned out to hold the remnants of the Mortuary Chapel for the Nicholson Clan, the same clan whose homestead sat on the headland beside our hotel.

The best parts of Donald’s tour was that he was flexible – not being able to go to the Fairy Pools wasn’t so bad – we got to see the waterfalls further down the road, and it was the people on the tour who made the choice not to go (and get wet) and it gave us more time to see the dinosaur tracks on the beach. Not a bad trade off.

The post Skye Scenic Tours – Winter Tour appeared first on etrip.tips.

We arrived on the last train from Inverness at 8:30pm and the receptionist from the hotel rang at 8pm to ensure that we were still coming. The hotel was only a five minute walk from the station, but Kyle is so small you pretty much see the all the sights on the way.

When we arrived, check in proceeded smoothly and we headed upstairs to our room. We weren’t expecting luxury and the room was perfectly serviceable – if we had one complaint it would have been that everything was maybe a little small, probably due to the size of humans when the hotel was built (pre 1897 by all accounts). So while the room was clean and the bed comfortable, the TV was tiny and I only just fitted into the shower!

We were spoiled for breakfast the next day, though. Angela had the porridge and they had oat milk for her as a dairy alternative, while I enjoyed my pancakes which came with sausage, bacon and scrambled eggs. All washed down with coffee and orange juice.

The Kyle is such a convenient location – I actually had stayed there almost ten years before when I’d travelled to Skye with my mother and although my memory isn’t perfect, I’d hazard a guess that the hotel hadn’t changed a jot since then. If you’re looking for somewhere to lay your head overnight between trains or buses, it’s definitely convenient!

The post Review: The Kyle Hotel, Kyle of Lochalsh appeared first on etrip.tips.

• Jersey
• Saint Malo
• Pontorson
• Mont Saint Michel
• Bayeux
• Arromanches
• Juno Beach
• Carentan
• Bayeux Tapestry

Getting There

Covid had previously impacted our 2020 Travel Plans, so when we saw a window of opportunity to do some travel in France we jumped at it, but we were also a bit wary of booking anything.

We’d spent so long making the original plans and then having to go through the rigmarole of cancelling everything that we wanted to be as sure as possible before making more plans. It didn’t help that after booking things the UK government reacted to the higher Covid rates in France and imposed a 14 day self-isolation rule on people returning from France. Ange and I both work from home so that wouldn’t be too problematic, but there was talk about France retaliating in kind which would rather spoil the trip if we had to stay in one place for fourteen days.

We’d found a flight from Glasgow to Jersey which necessitated an early morning train ride, but the low appetite for travel meant that once we arrived at the airport, we breezed through security and were very ably looked after at the only lounge that was open.

Jersey

We had a compulsory Covid test on arrival and while it wasn’t the “let’s see if we can hit your brain via your nostrils” sort of test, it was more of a “let’s see if we can make you throw up by hitting your gag reflex” sort of a test. Still, not the worst kind of medical test you can get, so not worth worrying about it.

We then headed to St Helier, the capital of Jersey, via bus. As we left the interior and started to inch our way around the coastal route in heavy traffic, we could see how St Helier’s Bay in Auckland got its name: it shared the same gently sloping beach and golden sands.

We checked into the Royal Yacht Hotel and then explored the town a little. The original plan was to dash across the island and check out the World War Two tunnels built with slave labor, but the miserable weather, early start and lack of public transport sapped us of the necessary enthusiasm so instead we amused ourselves in town – checking out where the ferry building was so that we would be able to find it the next morning.

We’d managed to arrive in the year of the 75th anniversary of liberation from the Nazi invaders, but the strong focus on these events weren’t restricted to just those celebrations: the main town square was Liberation Square, the bus station was Liberation Station and the local shopping centre was Liberation Wharf.

The next morning we headed to the port and checked in for the ferry ride to the French mainland. We were about fifteenth in the queue, and were waved through past the security checkpoint. I paused, confused, expecting everybody to have to go through the checkpoint. After they told me the third time to keep going, it finally registered that they just took the first ten or twelve people to check and the rest, well….

The people behind us joked about it – “I guess we don’t look like criminals” a reference to the fact that everybody was masked like highway robbers from the Wild West. We were still joking about it when a group of four men walked through the waiting area to the main doors.

I looked over at Ange and her eyes were wide. She’d noticed, as I had that two of them had their jackets over their arms in an attempt to hide the fact that they were heavily manacled. Not the handcuffs you see on TV, but thick chains like you see to lock up motorbikes. One of the non-handcuffed escorts headed back, while the two prisoners and their other escort were let onto the gangway by a ferry staff member. He then turned to the room at large and invited all other guests to follow him down to the ferry. Those who had seen the manacles were a little slower than those who hadn’t!

Back to top

Saint Malo

I spent most of my time on the two hour ferry ride chatting with a local who split his time between Jersey and Normandy. Him and his wife (and two dogs) were driving to their house and said that normally they’d offer to drop us off at Mont Saint Michel, but that the car was packed with dog accoutrements and luggage. I thanked him for thinking of us, but said we were hoping to have a look around Saint Malo.

We could keep an eye on the prisoners and their escort who surprisingly were laughing and chatting quietly. Our new friends indicated that they occasionally had French people who came over and got into trouble and the local police would just send them back to France and say “don’t come back”. That satisfied my question about why Jersey (part of UK) would send prisoners to France rather than maybe back to mainland UK.

As we came into the port, we could see the walls around the old town which had been recommended to us. So we made sure we were some of the first off the boat, making our way onto the first of the waiting buses which ferried us to the passport check where they stamped Ange’s passport and casually flicked their eyes at mine and then we were in France.

We made our way into the interior of the city through the thick walls and into a very picturesque old town with stone buildings and cobbled streets.

Breakfast at the hotel was a while ago, so we endeavoured to find something to eat, and happened upon the main town square surrounded by tourist trap restaurants.

We selected one where we could sit inside away from the smokers, partially attracted by the giant teddy bear out the front, and got stuck into the first of many baguettes we would have over the course of our trip.

Suitably satiated, we headed towards the wall which encircled the town. The staircase which we chose to access the battlements had a bit of a story. It was the kennels where the guard dogs were housed. At night they’d close the gates and release the dogs. The dogs wouldn’t be fed during the day so they were naturally quite hungry – an incentive to catch anyone out and about after curfew.

I assume that they were fed in the morning after running around all night. The practice was stopped after a military officer was returning after curfew and was caught and mauled by the dogs!

The views from the wall were quite lovely, islands and forts from Napoleonic times scattered around. The sun was out which explained why some kids were swimming in the lido – some even diving from the diving board.

While the sun was out, there was still a fair bit of wind, and the horizon was a wall of clouds of various hues.

The walls were very thick and occasionally a military building of some description would appear behind it – an obvious location for more cannons.

Eventually the path lead to a gate in the walls and we headed down on to the beach. A whole lot of logs had been driven into the sand to protect the town walls against the waves, making a denuded forest with a ten foot wide no man’s land.

We made our way around the walls until we came across the second cluster of restaurants, these ones encircling the town square in front of the Town Hall. We climbed back onto the ramparts, and enjoyed the unique perspective – one restaurant’s glass conservatory roof forming a fascinating insight into what other people were eating.

I was just commenting how the clouds were turning dark when the temperature abruptly dropped. and the heavens opened. We dashed to the shadow of a turret along the walls which offered a slight respite.

When it looked like the rain had set in for a long time, Ange got out her umbrella and we headed down the stairs through a cascade of water to stand in the gate which passed through the walls which provided much more cover. Not long after we made ourselves comfortable, the rain stopped, just as suddenly as it had started.

We completed the loop of the town on the top of the walls, marvelling at the darkness of the storm clouds not a kilometre away as the rain continued its way along the coast.

From this corner of the walls we could see the Condor Ferry which had takes us across the short section of the Channel between Jersey and Saint Malo.

We’d seen as much of the old town as we could and so headed towards the train station, Google Maps navigating the way for us but a yacht needing to come into the harbour meaning the road was raised for them to get by.

It was a six minute detour if we went the long way so we waited patiently with a growing group of fellow tourists and locals alike (the joke was that you can tell the locals because they’re the ones carrying a baguette or two).

Before too long the yacht passed through, the road was lowered and we carried on our way, finding a cafe near the station and having a coffee while waiting for the train.

We had a forty five minute layover in Dol de Bretagne so endeavoured to find something to eat again. That ended up being a twenty minute walk through the town to a supermarket where everything was organic, a five minute scramble to find something we could eat without cooking, followed by a fifteen minute jog back to the train station in the rain.

Back to top

Mont Saint Michel

We checked into our AirBnB and the next morning we headed out nice and early to walk to the free shuttle which would take us to Mont Saint Michel.

The AirBnB was actually in Beauvoir, on a hill overlooking the bay, and so five minutes from the room we could actually catch our first glimpses of the Abbey.

The mudflats are famous in the area and even have a featured spot in the Bayeux Tapestry. We’d been told not to go on them without a guide as there was quicksand. There were guided groups heading out and an organised group on horseback as well, but there were also couples and single people ignoring the advice and heading out across the mud. They did tend to stay close to the town walls though.

We entered the town and followed the only road, Ange asking if this was the way. I told her that there was only really one way and it lead up to the Abbey, so we followed a group of well-armed soldiers through the tourist trap shops and made our way up the cobbled street to the ticket office.

The man at the counter apologised and said that there were no guides available because of Covid so I turned to Ange and told her that I would fill the gap. I’d last been to MSM ten years ago, but I assured her I still knew all the facts and figures.

From the top you could get the sense of grandeur that being on the highest point in kilometres in every direction brings. You could appreciate just how quickly the tide would have to travel to cover all the bay four times in a day, and I regaled Ange with (made up) statistics of how many tourists and horses they lose every year to the quicksands in the bay.

Photos like the one below helped in my graphic tales of ultimately doomed rescue attempts and how sometimes whole rows of cyclists on mountain bikes disappeared into the mud never to be seen again. At night, I told her, you can sometimes hear them ringing their bells forlornly from the other side…ring ring! ring ring!

The shells were a motif woven into the decorations on the Abbey, indicative of the fact that MSM was a stop in the Camino de Santiago which we’d discovered in Saint Guilhelm le Désert.

The French hold MSM as a symbol of national pride because it never fell to the English in the Hundred Year’s War. You can see why, with the steep roads, thick walls and imposing battlements, it would be very easy to defend.

Ten years ago the causeway didn’t exist and the tour buses would drive all the way to the base of the town before dropping off their passengers and then driving back across the causeway in case they got stuck.

Now the buses park in the carpark and everybody walks, cycles or comes on the free shuttle. The causeway means that it is only in the highest of high tides that you can’t access the town.

At the top the Abbey’s cloister used to have honey bees and a proper garden, very handy for waiting out those long medieval sieges.

It was amusing for us that the Abbey let you select whether you wanted to exit through the gift shop or not – both staircases ending on the floor with the gift shop, but one at the beginning of it and one just after the cashiers.

Most attractions we’d been to had taken commercial advantage of the flow of visitors and channeled them all through the gift shop to try and squeeze what they could out of them so it was unusual to see an attraction forego this.

We descended via the town walls, past the restaurants who actually have views out across the mudflats (and charge an extra couple of Euro per meal for the pleasure) and back down into the town proper.

We thought ourselves quite clever to select a crêperie on the 1st floor, the stairs hidden within yet another tacky tourist tat shop. When we got there it wasn’t quite full but getting close and we realised that everyone else was swarming to anywhere which was reasonably priced. The crepes were delicious!

Afterwards we made our way back to the hotel, this time instead of cutting through farmland between the free shuttle drop off and Beauvoir, we walked along the canal instead, passed frequently by cyclists on their way to or from MSM, some on ebikes with a thicker frame or battery poking out the back.

For dinner we tried one of the many restaurants in La Greve, all clustered around the main road joining MSM with Pontorson where the train station was.

The bridge across the canal was one way and it was mildly amusing watching one or other of the cars on the bridge having to back up after realising that the oncoming cars had right of way and weren’t budging.

The meal itself was great with a balance of burger and fries with just a nod to a salad. The local cider was delicious and cheap – always a dangerous combination!

On the way home the country lane between La Greve and Beauvoir was lit by sunlight fighting its way through the clouds, which was quite picturesque.

Back to top

Pontorson

The next day we had a choice. And not really a good one. We had a fair few hours to wait for our train from Pontorson to Bayeux, but there was very little to do in any of La Greve, Beauvoir or Pontorson. So we decided to head into Pontorson by bus and hang out until the train came.

We started off wandering the streets of Pontorson looking at all the restaurants and weighing up whether to go inside. It was a Sunday afternoon and the whole country pretty much shuts up between 2 and 5, so we were lucky to find something that was still open and at the right price point. Ange finally got her own bowl of moules et frites (she’d previously just tried mine) and could see what the fuss was about.

We soaked up a bit more time later on in the afternoon by going to the local chocolate shop for a cup of tea (Ange) and the Cafe Gourmand (me) – an espresso with jug of warm milk, served in an edible, chocolate-lined cup followed by a pair of chocolates and a macaroon. Fun to eat and quite delicious!

Eventually the time came for the train and we headed on for the next stop, Bayeux. We had searched for other ways to get to Bayeux, but whether it was because of Covid, or because it was Sunday, there were no other options available.

Back to top

Bayeux

After checking into the Churchill Hotel, we went to a nearby restaurant (La Table du Terroir) and enjoyed a late dinner. I had the Terroir Burger while Ange had the vegetable soup. Terroir in this case referring to the influence of the environment (soil and weather etc) on the food rather than “terror”.

The next day we headed out for an organised tour of the D-Day beaches, returning in the early evening.

This time we went further afield for something to eat. We ended up at a place called La Marsala where I had a pizza and Ange had the vegetarian pasta.

For desert she had the strawberry sorbet but I asked for the profiteroles. For some reason I expected to get a little pyramid of them, and so when I asked how many were in the serving and they responded that there were two, my face must have fallen.

For the price, two little profiteroles would have to taste pretty amazing to be value of money. I needn’t have worried though: when they did come there were two profiteroles, yes, but they were of such a size and accompanied by so much cream that I was well satisfied.

The following day the bus time table ticked over to the winter schedule, and whether it was that or Covid, there wasn’t much public transport access to the D-Day beaches – two buses out to the Eastern three beaches (Gold, Sword and Juno) each day.

Our research didn’t look very appealing so we headed over to the Information Centre and they confirmed what we’d come up with on the local bus service. We decided to check out the local Cathedral while we were waiting for the bus out to Arromanches/Gold Beach.

On the way to the bus stop we found a vending machine offering fresh pizza in three minutes, which we thought was a good solution for fast food under Covid.

Back to top

Arromanches 360

The headlands overlooking Gold Beach are now a camping site for RV and campervans. The spectacular view of the sea with the remnants of the Mulberry temporary harbour in the foreground must make a stunning view, especially with the sun rising or setting on the horizon.

We got off the bus at the 360 Cinema which we realised was a great idea, given the steepness of the hill up from the township and the heat of the day.

Overlooking the beaches was an observation point, built on top of a pillbox which had been converted into a toilet.

Nearby part of the floating jetty showed what the Mulberry portable harbour consisted of – imagine if you would hundreds of these pointing out into the harbour in four fingers with trucks driving along them laden with supplies.

Getting closer to the cinema we passed the D-Day 75 Garden which had first been unveiled at the Royal Chelsea Flower Show. The fleetingness of life was very well represented by the medium of wire mesh with the bodies seeming to fade away as you walked around them.

The actual Arromanches 360 cinema is a nine screen standing experience which shows the story of the 100 days of the Normandy campaign. It’s a bit distracting having the screens covering all 360 degrees – I was always wondering if I was missing something going on behind me!

The movies themselves are well worth the trip – very informative, but worrying. The combat footage indicated that some poor camera person was filming the soldiers while they were under fire. Can you imagine the conversation with Health and Safety if that happened today?

“So there will be people who are shooting at you while you try to film?”

“Yes”

“Hmm.. that sounds like it might be a little dangerous… could you hold up a sign or something to say that you’re filming and not to shoot? Or maybe do your filming when they’re not there?”

Anyway, hats off to the Cinema for securing such good footage – it’s the closest we can get to see what it was like during those fateful 100 days. And it really brings to light just what an engineering feat it was with the Mulberrys.

Our Arromanches 360 visit was supported by Laurent and Laetitia at Arromanches 360 and Fran at Normandy Tourism.

After the Cinema, we headed down the hill to the town of Arromanches. The path was incredibly well signposted and seeing it was downhill, it was easy going. At the bottom of the hill we elected to head to the beach. We were lucky with the tide and we could walk right up to the floating concrete blocks which formed part of the harbour.

I was glad that they left the remnants here, it allowed you to fill the gaps and see the scale of the exercise. We tried to get into the Musée du Débarquement but after standing in a line for 20 minutes with no indication of what was causing the delay, or the expected time we’d be able to enter, we decided to cut our losses and explore the rest of the town.

The town itself had the familiar sleepy feeling of a holiday resort – clothing stores interspersed with restaurants of various price points. We walked the length of the main road in no time and then I grabbed an ice cream (double wafer cone – peanut and banana/chocolate) and we thought about how we were going to get to the next beach.

The second bus eastward would be coming through at the same time as the last bus westward, so we couldn’t wait for that one – the plan was for us to take a taxi to Juno Beach. The taxi rank was right there in the main square, but when I rang them the lady answering the phone indicated that it would be two hours before the driver would be able to take us. I shrugged, thanked her and checked Uber. We got very lucky and found a driver 10 minutes away who would be able to take us.

Back to top

Juno Beach Centre

Half an hour later Murat was dropping us off outside the Juno Beach Centre. Staffed exclusively by Canadians, the centre does a wonderful job of explaining the context behind the Canadian involvement in World War Two.

It starts off in the 1930s explaining where the nation was in terms of independence, and covers the maturation of its armed forces from the disasters at Hong Kong and Dieppe, to the closing of the Falaise Pocket and advance on Germany.

While even under Covid there is plenty to see and experience, they’ve had to remove the more tactile exhibits and displays which is a pity. Despite this there is plenty to keep everyone occupied, and the introductory video showing the mock up of a landing craft is a good way of introducing the experience that the soldiers would have encountered while coming ashore at Juno.

The last sections of the museum’s permanent exhibitions are the most touching with the focus on the service people that didn’t come back plus a video entitled They Walk With You, linking the servicemen who came ashore at Juno with those Canadians alive now.

There are a number of temporary exhibits including a spotlight on the stories of Great Women during the War, an eye opening look at the lives of both European and Canadian women during wartime.

Our Juno Beach Centre visit was supported by Ophélie and Patrick from Juno Beach Centre and Fran at Normandy Tourism.

After visiting the museum at Juno, we had a half hour wait for the last bus to go back to Bayeux. We used the time to check out the beach and the surrounding town of Courseulles-sur-Mer, which had even more monuments and memorials to the Canadian forces during D-Day.

We were starting to get a little worried when the bus was late – it’s hard to have a plan B when you’re in the middle of nowhere with no trains, limited taxi and Uber services, so it was a relief when the bus turned up, a trainee driver behind the wheel supervised by another member of staff.

After an exhausting trip, we found ourselves back at Table du Terroir for another burger, this time we both had the fish burger washed down with a bottle of the same cider we’d had at La Marsala previously.

After dinner we headed off to our accommodation: this time Le Château des Monts in the little hamlet just out of Bayeux called Barbeville. The next morning we came back into town after breakfast and dropped our luggage off at the Winston Churchill Hotel in preparation for our last night. Then walked to the station to catch a train to Carentan and the D-Day Experience.

Back to top

Carentan

The D-Day Experience is not really in Carentan – it’s a 40 minute walk away and given the sun’s strength we decided to grab a cab from the train station to the museum. We were very glad we did – the path alongside the road was denuded of tree cover so we would have gotten sunburnt on the way.

Our petty reservations were brought to light when we discovered that the road to Carentan from Dead Man’s Corner was a hard fought after corridor which was to prove central to the protection of the Western flank of the break out from the D-Day beaches.

The Museum itself is nuts. There’s no other way of describing it. It starts with the house used as a headquarters by first the German Paratroopers and then by their American counterparts. This is where you get your first introduction to the exhibits which are eerie in their realism. They stare through you as they sit or stand in realistic positions with authentic equipment as you read the placards nearby.

The sheer volume of equipment is astounding. In each exhibit all manner of weapons, equipment and uniforms are displayed with explanations and by the time you’ve looked upstairs and downstairs and head through the saloon type doors, you find yourself in the shop. Not the gift shop, but instead a place where you can buy enough equipment and weapons to costume a whole movie set.

There are weapons, uniforms, badges and emblems, medals and webbing and all manner of equipment, for sale. It feels like a military surplus store on steroids: all the equipment comes with eye watering price tags and are presumably all authentic. I couldn’t imagine paying almost €3k for a German helmet unless it was the real thing.

I can’t imagine who would want to buy a medal though – who would wear an unearned Purple Heart?

Anyways, it was onto the D-Day Experience inside a real C-47. We sat for a briefing where a holographic officer gave us the low down of what was going to happen and then we all shuffled aboard a genuine C-47 and buckled ourselves in.

I won’t give away the rest of it but let’s just say it did a really good job of showing what it might have been like inside a C-47 leaving England and participating in the drops over the Contentin Peninsular on the night before D-Day.

Afterwards we checked out the exhibits. I was fascinated by one describing the paratroopers who took on the hairstyles and face paint of the Mohawk Native Americans. I was pretty sure they would be accused of cultural appropriation now, especially with Cancel Culture.

After that we headed upstairs for more exhibits featuring hyper-realistic mannequins posing in various scenes. The size of these scenes are larger than I’ve seen in other museums and the D-Day Experience must have a huge footprint because they have so many of them as well.

Our final stage of the D-Day Experience was the 3D cinema which showed a a couple of movies illustrating the advancement of the lines during D-Day, and in particular the Battle for Carentan.

The 3D really came into its own with the illustration of planes fighting using an almost Matrix like bullet cam effect. The only downside to this was that the big screen had French commentary while we had headphones dialled into English, so you had to turn the volume up to drown out the French equivalent. It may have been better to have the cinema sound off and for everybody to rely on their individual headphones for the commentary.

Our trip D-Day Experience visit was supported by Aurélie at D-Day Experience and Fran at Normandy Tourism.

Back to top

The Bayeux Tapestry

We took a cab back to the train station and then returned to Bayeux by train, arriving at about 4 – just enough time for a quick bite from Le Conquerant before heading across to the Bayeux Tapestry Museum.

Thanks to Covid there was no queue and we were able to go straight in. The audio guide really is a must because without it you’ll be looking at a medieval embroidery stretching for 70 metres without picking out the meaningful bits, especially if your Latin abilities are, like mine, zero.

No photography allowed, but an entertaining and informative half hour of the story of William, Duke of Normandy’s conquest of England in 1066.

Our Bayeux Tapestry Museum visit was supported by Fanny at Bayeux Tapestry Museum and Fran at Normandy Tourism.

After the Tapestry we took advantage of our proximity to the local Carrefour (supermarket) to buy a salad and a baguette and watched a movie in the hotel room.

Back to top

On the way home

So on the last day of our trip, we have ample time and have booked tickets on the train with allocated seating. For the first time my SNCF app actually showed the QR code for the trip, so any conductor would be able to scan it and not need to see the booking email. Awesome!

The train trip from Bayeux to Paris St Lazare was supposed to stop briefly in Caen before continuing on, but we stopped there for a while… and then a while longer… and finally after a 30 minute wait I got up to see what was going on.

I went up to the Chef du Gare who was on the platform and he looked up expectantly as I approached. “Hi, uh… what’s going on?” I asked. He didn’t understand my question. “I don’t speak much French and so I haven’t been able to follow the announcements,” I explained.

I think he’d spent 30 minutes getting chewed out by other passengers so he was a little blunt. “We found a bomb,” he said. “We’re not going anywhere for at least two hours.”

“Well, that’s not very good,” I managed, looking at the body language of the other people waiting on the platform. Nobody was panicking, and the fact we’d been there for 30 minutes made me think that there was nothing to worry about.

I pointed to the signage board behind him which indicated that there was another train to Paris coming in at 11:48, about an hour away.

“Will that train be able to take us?” I asked, indicating both the rails that our train currently occupied plus the number of passengers on the platform.

I think that he was surprised I wasn’t holding him personally responsible for the delay, and so he answered that the 11:48 would come into the station on the line on the other side of the platform and that there would be no issue with capacity. I thanked him and went and told Ange the news.

We decided that while there didn’t seem to be any immediate danger, we’d go and use the time to grab some food, stopping at La Consigne across the way from the station. Ange had the soothing soup and I had the calming fromage et jambon baguette and we headed back in time for the 11:48. Which was saying that it was now delayed by an hour and a quarter.

I looked at Ange and we started thinking about backup plans. I saw that the train to Rouen was leaving at about noon, and that if it was halfway between Caen and Paris then maybe we could catch a train to Paris from there.

I was worried that our tickets were for Bayeux to Paris only, so joined a short queue waiting to talk to one of the station staff, and explained our predicament. She said that it was not advisable, not because of the ticket situation, merely that the train from Rouen to Paris would leave four minutes after the train from Caen arrived in Rouen and that wasn’t enough time for the transfer. And most importantly that the 11:48 might be able to arrive earlier.

I relayed all this to Ange and we decided that even though we might be able to grab a cab from Rouen to the airport, it was probably a better option to wait for the 11:48. Not long after the Rouen train left, the signage on the big board indicated that the 11:48 would be now arriving in 20 minutes. A mass of people headed to the platform and we trailed along behind them.

We’d originally planned on taking public transport to the airport from Paris but we didn’t want to have any further delays, so elected to spring for a taxi instead. Paris during lunchtime in the searing afternoon sun was a shock after the gentile tranquility of the countryside towns of Bayeux and Beauvoir.

While masks were everywhere, there really wasn’t much social distancing going on – maybe because everyone was safely isolating in their cars?

Anyway, we made it to the terminal and to our gate without any further incident, taking off in lovely sun and flying above the clouds all the way up the body of the UK, before poking down through the cloud cover (with a few bumps) and seeing the welcoming sight of Edinburgh.

After landing and crossing the tarmac by foot and feeling the first drops of rain starting because our carrier didn’t want to spend any money on an air bridge, we zoomed through passport control and waited for our bus to come.

Just then the heavens opened and a biblical downpour ensued, which we watched from the dryness of our shelter. Ten minutes before our bus arrived, the rain stopped and the storm passed over towards the city and we watched a gorgeous rainbow follow in its wake, an obvious ray of hope after the darkness of the storm.

Back to top

The post Visiting Jersey, Brittany & Normandy appeared first on etrip.tips.

We were the only ones on the morning section of the American D-Day Beaches Full Day Tour from Bayeux, which meant that from Saint Marie Eglise, through to the Museum at Utah beach we had Adeline all to ourselves.

We’d started from the pickup point in Bayeux, the Covid briefing identifying that we’d need hand sanitiser every time we got into the van and when Charles and Cathy joined us in the afternoon we’d have to wear our masks in the back, but until then the plastic screen separating Adeline in the drivers seat from us in the passengers section would mean that we could breathe freely.

Saint Marie Eglise

We drive through the streets of Normandy from Bayeux to the church in the square at Saint Marie Eglise, made famous by the scenes in the movie The Longest Day which retold (with artistic license) the paratrooper who got stuck on the roof and played dead until he could be rescued by his colleagues.

I was tickled by the play on words the local hairdressers had used in their name, the town was full of references to the Airborne paratroopers liberating the city, cafes named after the events or units in operation in the area and museums seemingly on every corner.

Inside the church we looked around as Adeline filled us in on the memorial stained glass windows and the events in WW2 when the town was the first to be liberated by the American forces.

Utah Beach

After a lot of information, we continued on to the Utah Beach Museum where we were given a short amount of time to make our way through the museums on our own steam. We really didn’t have enough time to do it justice – there was a short film which chewed up a bunch of our allocated time and the exhibits were in-depth and well though out. But we had to get back to Bayeux to pick up Charles and Cathy who were joining us for the afternoon component of the tour.

I was particularly impressed by the details – the scattered parachutists landing sites, the names for the sub-beaches within Utah for example: all bringing the night before and the days immediately following D-Day into a more granular story.

The beach itself was nondescript, a stretch of wide sand which could have been anywhere, belying the importance all those years ago.

Pointe du Hoc

After a quick lunch back in Bayeux, we picked up Charles and Cathy and headed to the first stop on the afternoon tour – the battery at Pointe du Hoc. Here six First World War 155mm cannons were embedded which could cover the beaches at Utah and Omaha. It was fascinating to hear the challenges the US Rangers faced scaling the cliffs and how they overcame them on D-Day.

Unfortunately due to Covid we couldn’t go inside the bunkers themselves, instead having to rely on the view from the outside and Adeline’s commentary to fill the gaps on how the battery looked back then and what the combatants would have seen during the campaign

Omaha Beach

After Pointe du Hoc we headed to Omaha Beach, the landing site of the American troops, and the one with the highest casualty rate. As depicted in Saving Private Ryan and other movies, the bombardments of the coastal defenses wasn’t as successful as on other beaches and so the landing went slower and with a higher casualty rate. When you’re there you can see why. The bluffs from where the embedded German forces fought truly dominated the beach front from where the American soldiers came ashore.

What struck me as strange was that one of the units that came ashore was from the National Guard – not a branch of the US military that I expected to be in a front line role.

American Cemetery

After enough time to explore on our own and grab a snack or coffee if you wanted to, we headed back to the van for our second to last stop. This was the American Cemetery at Normandy, including the Garden of the Missing.

A wall of the soldiers missing in action in the Normandy Campaign with their rank, unit and state showed all those whose remains were not able to be found.

When the wonders of modern science made connecting the remains with the missing soldier possible, instead of scratching off their name from the Garden’s walls, they tastefully placed a little marker next to their name to indicate that they’d be able to find their remains after all.

Around 60% of the families of the dead soldiers wanted their bodies to be sent back home, so the remainder were buried here in the vast fields.

Between the Cemetery and the Garden was a memorial showing the progression of the Normandy Campaign, from the landings to the extinguishing of the Falais Pocket, and it was fascinating seeing the representation of the campaign from such a different orientation.

Longues-sur-Mer

Our final stop was at the battery at Longues-sur-Mer. Here the gun emplacements hadn’t been bombed into oblivion like those at Pointe du Hoc, instead the fortifications and all bar one of the guns remained. It was interesting to get a better picture of what they would have looked like in situ.

We also paused briefly on the hill overlooking Arromanches/Gold Beach to view the remains of the breakwater for Mulberry B – the artificial floating harbour that the allies constructed after the beachhead was secured, an incredible feat of engineering!

With any tour you’re never going to have the right amount of time at every stop you make. In our case I’d have liked more time at the Utah Museum and possibly less time at Saint Marie Eglise, though if I was a fan of The Longest Day that might have been different. Our guide was good though, Adeline was knowledgeable, had a great binder with pertinent supporting photos and documents and genuinely knew her stuff.

Normandy is not well served by public transport, so you’re always going to have to trade off the convenience of visiting all those attractions in one day with a less than ideal proportion of time spent at each one. I think we were well served by Adeline and would recommend the tour to anyone.

The post Review: D-Day Beaches Tour from Bayeux appeared first on etrip.tips.

We didn’t spend nearly enough time at Chateau des Monts, a lovely old chateau five minutes from Bayeux in the heart of Normandy. The approach is up a tree-lined driveway, the branches above forming a canopy which perfectly frames the first views you get of the main building of the chateau.

Inside we’re taken up two flights of stairs and along a corridor to our room #1 because we are the only guests staying in the place. Online it says that there are five rooms available with room for eighteen guests, but as we ascended the stairs I could see some doors had #9 and #10 on them. So I’m not sure if they only have five at a time or if there is more capacity should they need it. Because the place is huge. It sits on 90 acres of private gardens with a lake and flower gardens and dates back to the 18th Century.

The Room

Our room was enormous. Lit by a chandelier and decorated with period pieces, it was an exercise in tasteful restraint.

In the bathroom was a super shower that we quite frankly couldn’t figure out how to operate. I stood there clicking every button and moving every knob around but it was only when our host explained that the bottom dial was also a lever which needed to be lifted, that we got a steady stream of water coming through the rain forest outlet in the ceiling.

I think you’d really need to stay a little longer just so you could enjoy all the different combinations that the power shower/bath is capable of!

There is so much room in the bathroom – opposite the vanity are three wardrobes – plenty of space to unpack all your luggage!

Back in the room we noted the TV tucked in the corner – I don’t think many would watch TV when there is so much to do at the chateau, but I also noticed the almost invisible door leading to an adjacent room. Locked and a table in front of it indicating that it was off limits, but also indicating that you could have a large family here and with the interconnecting rooms you could have your space and still be connected.

I called out to Ange: “What is black with blonde hair, exposed breasts and one cloven hoof?”

Ange frowned, and responded “I don’t know, what?”

“I don’t know either but three of them are holding up our table.”

Breakfast

In the morning we headed down for breakfast. Now on our arrival the night before we had a conversation with the host. She didn’t speak much English and my French is… limited, shall we say? But despite that, as usual with good humour and all the best intentions we muddled through.

She’d asked us what we wanted for breakfast and I, more as an excercise in showing off my vocabulary, rattled off all the words for breakfast food I could remember.

“Les cereals, pain, baguette, pain du chocolate, croissant, yogurt, cafe, jambon et fromage pour le pain, les fruits, cafe et jus -“

“Quelle saveur de jus? Orange?”

“Oui, jus d’orange.”

I trailed off, racking my brain for any other words which were appropriate.

“L’ouef?” she prompted.

“Oui! S’il vous plait”

I realized then that my laundry list of breakfast demands was probably bordering on excessive, but she took it all in good humor, noting that I was a large man and needed to keep the engine running. I also think it helped that no one else was staying so I could get away with demanding enough food for five!

So in the morning when we made our way into the breakfast room we could see that the table was figuratively groaning under the weight of all the food.

The sideboard had a selection of three cereals, and the panels on each side turned out to be doors into the kitchen beyond.

There were even things we hadn’t asked for, so I guess my demands….er requests…may have exhausted my French vocabulary but certainly hadn’t exhausted our hosts capacity for breakfast.

There was:

Dried prunes, dried apricot, yogurt, apple conserve and strawberry jam, croissant, baguette, les madelines in single serve plastic wraps, bananas, apples, plums, kiwifruit and a peach. Two different cheeses, including Camembert, ham and butter, three cereals (oats, toasted muesli with fruit or chocolate bits). Hot and cold milk for coffee and cereal respectively. And two freshly fried eggs each.

What I loved about the Chateau was that as any large building gets bigger the rooms and their functions get extremely more narrow – if you have enough room for three dressing rooms off a bedroom, for example, you might decide to have one specially for shoes. In this case there was an anteroom before the breakfast room which held a single circular table with a guest book on it, with good wishes and thank you’s from other guests.

Just off the main staircase was the petite salon complete with coffee and tea making facilities and a leisurely place to sit and relax, and the views are quite spectacular – our morning visage could have been straight out of a painting.

Speaking of paintings, the decor was impeccable with tasteful decorations and artwork adorning the walls.

The entrance was actually a conservatory with a pair of large dogs who refused to fetch the ball, regardless of how long I threw it for them. They just stood there staring down the driveway as if watching for someone. Good listeners though…

I’d definitely go back, this time for a bit longer. The staff are welcoming and we’d only just begun to scratch the surface in discovering the facilities. A perfect base for exploring the D-Day Beaches, Bayeux and beyond.

The post Review: Chateau des Monts, Barberville Normandy appeared first on etrip.tips.

You can’t do better for location than the Churchill Hotel in Bayeux. It is perfectly positioned across from the Information Centre, literally beside the local Carrefour if you want ready to eat meals, directly opposite takeaways and bars if you want cheap eats and on the main road with a selection of restaurants of various budgets if you want a bit more upscale dining.

It’s also local for the Cathedral, the Tapestry Museum and the pickup point for the various tours which go to the D-Day Beaches as well.

We had two separate stays booked at the Churchill and stayed three nights in total. The reception area is what you’d expect from any hotel in France, but the staircase is where the hotel decor starts reflecting the namesake. It’s plastered with photos of Winston Churchill on his visits to France and the WW2 motif is repeated throughout the hotel.

First Room

Our first room was a standard, with a good sized bed efficiently positioned in the space available and the window overlooking the entrance. The floodlights outside illuminated the hotel a little too well on the second night and we had to ask them to turn off the outside lights which they did straight away.

A lovely little desk sat in the corner allowing you to get some work done and the TV was a good size for watching from the bed – not so much if you were foolish enough to try to watch it from the chair at the desk.

The bathroom was newly renovated and had the static pump dispensers so I couldn’t quite see what brand of toiletries they had.

Breakfast

We’d been spoiled for breakfast in our trip through France and the Churchill was no exception, even under Covid conditions.

Individual baskets of yogurt and breads were provided for each table, with single serve butter, jams and marmalade. A coffee machine, water and juice jugs were the available for self service as was the cereal station with two choices plus individually wrapped madelines.

They also brought a plate of jambon et fromage – no Camembert this time but they did come with some mini tomatoes.

Second Room

We’d arranged for the third of our three nights at the Churchill to be in a Deluxe room, but upon checking in found that they had upgraded us to a Junior Suite. The biggest difference as you would expect was the size – the standard room had been a snug 14 sqm, but the Junior Suite was a very roomy 23 sqm! From the pictures I’d seen the Junior Suites were decorated with a different featured picture – ours could very well have been called the Jeep Room.

The Junior Suite certainly felt a lot more like a posh hotel than the standard room, with robes and additional pillows in the cupboard.

The bathroom was brand new, with good water pressure in the shower. Again the dispensers were the mounted type so I couldn’t see what kind of toiletries they’d stocked them with.

An impressive array of windows allowed natural light to flood the room, and the curtains were thick enough and well designed enough to totally block the light at night, which allowed for a very good night’s sleep.

The chaise longue was a nice touch and the decor was as modern as the standard room was classic.

Special mention must be made of the staff member who was on each of the times we checked in or out – so much so that I asked him if he ever went home. He laughed and said he was on from 7am to 8pm – a long day indeed. I regret not asking his name – he was always responsive, friendly and helpful. He also seemed to understand my attempts at French, pausing more to figure out the answer rather than decipher what I had tried to say!

You’d be hard pressed to find a better place to stay in Bayeux – the location as mentioned is superlative and the service is a cut above. Definitely worth a return visit!

The post Review: Churchill Hotel, Bayeux appeared first on etrip.tips.

Arnaud is a friendly sort. I like to think he’s always smiling but it’s hard to be sure because of the mask as we stay with him for two nights under Covid conditions. We’d received good communications with him leading up to the stay at his AirBnB in the small hamlet of Beauvoir, on a slight rise overlooking the bay containing Mont Saint Michel (MSM) on the border between Brittany and Normandy in France.

We’d taken almost every form of transportation to get there from Edinburgh: a flight to Jersey, a ferry to Saint Malo, a train to Pontorson and a bus to La Greve which turned out to be a cluster of restaurants on the main road to MSM, a ten minute walk from Beauvoir.

When we arrived we could see a family enjoying the late summer sun in the orchard under the apple trees and Arnaud came bustling along to show us the facilities and where our room was.

The Room

I was surprised by the room: it was exactly as the photos had shown it but the photos did not show the size and airiness of the room. There was a very comfortable couch beside the open air wardrobe. I wasn’t sure if Ange liked it because it was so comfortable or because it matched the palette of her clothes: muted aqua and stone marl.

The bed was huge. The flatness of the pillows wasn’t an issue, and I couldn’t figure out what the effect he was going for with the four posts, but there was no disputing the comfort or the size of the bed, we slept well both nights we stayed there.

The bathroom again was huge and new. We could have done with a soap dispenser of some sort in the shower, but it was easy enough to take the pump dispenser from the sink inside when we washed. The shower itself was close enough to brand new and the water pressure good.

Breakfast

Breakfast time is where Arnaud shined. He put on an impressive spread with cereal, yoghurt, croissant, rolls, pain du chocolate, baguettes, some sort of sweet loaf, an assortment of jams and marmalades, camembert with freshly made coffee and juice. Just what you need before walking the thirty minutes to where the free shuttles take you the rest of the way to MSM.

We were impressed by Arnaud’s flexibility also. When he discovered we’d exhausted what we wanted to do in MSM, he suggested we have a free late check-out to enjoy the comforts of our room before we headed off for the train station in Pontorson. No attempt to squeeze money out of us for the privilege, just being hospitable.

I’d definitely return if I was to visit Mont Saint Michel again. It’s far enough away from MSM to not have the premium that places try to charge, and yet it’s close enough to make it to the free shuttles without any fuss. While there aren’t any restaurants in Beauvoir, there are plenty a mere ten minute walk in La Greve. But mainly I’d return because of Arnaud and his hospitality.

The post Review: Arnaud’s AirBnB in Beauvoir, Normandy appeared first on etrip.tips.

Overlooking Weighbridge Square, adjacent to Liberation Square, the Royal Yacht is a hotel/restaurant in downtown St Helier on Jersey.

The original building on the corner has been added to, with restaurants on the ground and first floors – super popular from lunch all the way through to the small hours – and brand new apartment-type hotel rooms above large balconies looking out over the sea.

The newer apartments are more expensive though, so we settled for a standard double room in the older building.

The Room

The bed was large enough and if you like pillows, you’re in the right place!

The bathroom features toiletries in the Essentiel Elements Bathe range, made by Gilchrist & Soames, and even though we are in the original wing, the bathroom is still modern with a great shower.

The spa is operating at reduced capacity because of Covid, but the robes look comfortable and the room comes with additional blankets and pillows should you decide the eight on the bed aren’t enough!

The furnishings don’t feel dated: there are enough easily accessible power points to charge or power what need recharging or powering and the wood finish feels more classic than old.

The only complaint was that the internal walls are paper thin. We could clearly hear the conversations going on in the room beside ours at night, as well as the sounds of the programs that they were watching on TV. I imagine the more expensive rooms have more insulation.

Breakfast

Breakfast under Covid was a challenge. There was no signage, so I approached the breakfast buffet, as one would normally do, to discover that you were supposed to ask the non-existent wait staff to load your plate for you.

The staff member came bustling up after I’d started self serving to let me know in no uncertain terms that she was supposed to serve me. I bit my tongue – while I could see that the chef was making eggs to order, there was no other indication of how things work. The muddling through continued when I somehow got our neighbour’s espresso instead of the coffee I ordered. More of an issue for him I guess – hope he enjoyed my flat white.

The same entrance served both the nearby (very popular) restaurant as well as the hotel, which was annoying as we always had to explain to the maître d’ that we were guests of the hotel as we passed the velvet rope. But the real reason I wouldn’t return to the Royal Yacht is the lack of sound insulation in the original building.

The post Review: Royal Yacht Hotel, Jersey appeared first on etrip.tips.