Scotland 2.2: A day on the island of Kerrera and the most dramatic view of a castle yet

We woke up early and had breakfast with two women from the Netherlands, who then left for an all day hike.  We gathered our things and drove an hour south east to wait for a ferry for the island of Kerrera. 

Our hike was estimated to be three hours total, circling the bottom two thirds of the island.  We began at 11:30 am.  The weather when we had gotten out of our car was cloudy and quite breezy.  Today was scheduled to be ten degrees cooler than the previous two days, so we all had three layers of clothes on.  Once we began walking, the sun came out, and we had to each carry two of the layers with us.

We took our time, enjoying the hundreds of sheep that wandered around the island.  For Miles and I, sheep are exotic.  Stephanie pointed out that she grew up with sheep literally in her backyard, so to her, seagulls are exciting to see.

Near the beginning of the hike, Miles turned to me and asked me what I saw, as he pointed to smaller islands off the coast.  I said, the Enterprise.  He nodded yes.

Here are some of my favorite sites from the walk, including Miles befriending a dog.

At one point, Miles looked down and realized he had dropped his rain jacket.  I walked back about ten minutes on the path and was able to recover it.  Eventually, we saw Gylen Castle in the distance, the primary objective of our visit to the island.

You will have to click on the picture for it to expand.  Look closely, it is in the top left of the screen, just to the left of the group of rocks.  

Miles loves pebbled beaches, so we took a quick stop so he could enjoy himself.

We stopped at the one cafe on the island, which had shockingly good food.  I had a "spiralized" greek salad and an "apple quencher," said to have apple juice, water, mint, and a hint of lime.  It just tasted like apple juice to me.

After our break, we walked a short distance to finally arrive at the castle.  The view from the walk was breathtaking.  It was beyond a doubt the most dramatic of the castles I have seen thus far.

We climbed up a relatively steep hill and arrived at the top.  The sides of the castle went straight down, and I had a fairly strong reaction to the height, combined with how small of an area there was to walk on.  There wasn't much to actually see inside the castle, as apparently a fire had destroyed quite a bit of it.  We were only able to go up one floor, as no other floors remained.

We walked back down and I walked all around the sides, taking in the views from different angles, along with a tunnel full of sheep.

As we were leaving, we realized that more time had passed than we had thought.  It was 4:25.  The last ferry was at 6, but we remembered that there were larger gaps in ferry times around 5.  We walked at a faster pace.  This part of the hike had much less to see.  The only point of interest was a ship that had run ashore.

We arrived near the ferry about 5 minutes too late.  That ferry, at 5:00, was the last one until 5:55.  We sat down and relaxed in the shade.  Miles ended up making friends with another local dog, that apparently liked walking into the water and sitting down to cool off.

Just before our departure time, a boat passed us.  The ferry driver informed us that it was the last paddle steamer still sailing, in the world.

We drove home, picked up some food at the coop, and will relax for the rest of the night.