Wednesday 8/6 and Thursday 8/7 - Final Riding at the north end of Skye, and shuttling back to Edinburgh

As a group we decided to do a shorter ride for our Scotland bike touring finale, as the weather was looking dicey - guides Lucy and Craig loaded our bikes on the van trailer for a 15-mile motored ride up the east coast. But before leaving Portree we hung around to watch the town bagpipe band play in the square, to honor their fallen soldiers and open the Highland Games right in Portree.

Portree's senior statesmen waiting to parade in the main square

Guide Craig and June await the bagpipers (pictures of the band will follow)

We vanned up to a scenic overlook and started our ride after viewing the lovely Kilt Rock waterfall and this amazing geology:

The bike ride took us 19 miles around the top of the Isle of Skye.  It has a very wild and remote feel - mostly:

Elvis lives - even in remote northern Skye.

I am in love with spotted-leg black faced sheep!

It is all about the amazing scale.

And even more amazing scale - I'm the tiny orange spot on the left and the white object is an RV.

After the end of our ride, we had a lovely lunch and dried off in Uig. The van took us back to Portree for some afternoon town time - the Highland Games were in full swing and most of our group enjoyed watching the "heavies" toss hammers and cabers (and by their report, not always successfully!).

We hung out by the old waterfront:

The bagpipe band finished the day with a final march to mark the end of the Games:

Wonderful Scottish pageantry.

We noted that seagulls will be seagulls everywhere in the world - especially when French fries are involved:

And, Peter was able to get two more sketches done after a long hiatus:

View of Portree from the window of our room at the Marmalade Hotel.

Town center Portree.

We had a lovely farewell dinner (I loved the haggis/tatties/neeps appetizer and main course mussels!) and sang song lyrics to guides Lucy and Craig that we all made up on our rides to guides. We can hardly believe it is actually time to head home...

We left Portree and headed back to Edinburgh, dropping Jeff and Danielle at Fort William so they could take a train to Glasgow. We all did enjoy one more castle photo op on the way to Edinburgh:

Thank you all for following along - we are leaving at 9:15 am Scotland time tomorrow to head home! Big thanks again to guides Craig, Lucy and Rick for making the trip so wonderful, and to all our new bike touring friends as well.  Happy trails!