Manchester/Scotland 2025 - Isle of Skye Tour Fairy Pools (2/2)

 

This was as far as we walked inside the Fairy Pool. It did drizzled a bit while we were walking. Nothing a hood won't solve. 

The mysterious black pyramid hill area where we decided to turn back.

Here is a close up view. Look at all the mist around it! 

My husband standing there waving next to a waterfall. After a while, no matter how far in you walked, the view of the waterfalls kinda started to all look the same.....

Here is a close up shot. As you can see, not much colours. 

The mysterious landscape of mountains and clouds and waterfalls <3

Small private pool. Imagine you could actually swim in it. Could you? Well, apparently you can! At your own risk of course. And it seems the water is perpetually icy here. Maybe cause it's melted ice water! Hahahaha. I think it was good that the weather was cloudy, not many people here. 

A photo of one of the larger waterfall, where you could actually see those water colours of emerald green. 

Walking back. People scattered all over. There were family with kids walking, some dogs, some hikers, and some tourist like us. 

This is the view as we made our way back to the carpark. It's uphill from here.....

But wait! The sky started to turn a bright blue again!

Photo of me in the middle of the windy path.

Blue skies starting to appear in the Fairy Pool.  I bet it would be lovely in sunny weather.

Little streams of water running down the slope, with the forest at the top and blue skies. 

I wish we could have more time here, but being on a tour,  I guess I am grateful to just get to walk for more than an hour here!

Spotted 4 person walking across the landscape just in front of the woods. Told you people were just walking all over random places in the Highlands. It looked so fun! Lol.

Souvenir selfies. Bye bye Fairy Pool. Another magical spot in Skye <3

Manchester/Scotland 2025 - Isle of Skye Tour Fairy Pools (1/2)

Our 2nd stop on our 2nd day of the Isle of Skye tour, and I'm all overly excited! We're going to visit the Fairy Pools! Even the name itself was probably the reason I'm so excited. I love that it has "Fairy" in it. And I've seen photos on the internet, and it was such a lovely place! But I've only seen photos, and not read up much about it, so I wasn't sure what to expect.

So our guide dropped us opposite the road, and told us to just walk right in and back in two hours. I think it was two hours. Or maybe 1.5hours. She said there is no ending point. Just turn back whenever you want or when your time is up. Above in the photo, you could see a winding road that goes all in the way into the valley and towards the mountains. Yay! We were actually going to get to walk there! So excited!

Here is a rough map of the place. So the "P" on the map is where we were left off and where we had to get back to. And even in the map, there really isn't a clear ending. I don't even know where we stopped before we had to turn back. I remember it was 45minutes in, 45 minutes to walk back. And off we went!

The first part of walking in was fun and easy as it was going down sloped. But I had to remind myself that we have to walk the same way back, so better cater to more time to climb up the slow back to the highway roads! But would you just look at that view! I am so in love with this place!

As we walked further in, little streams and small waterfalls started to appear. This was why it was called to Fairy Pool, cause Fairy used to come and bath in these small pool made by the waterfalls. And noted that the weather we had while we were there wasn't really nice and sunny, so our photos were a bit dark and mysterious instead of those you might have seen which are blue and sunshine and everything good and bright :P

Some of the waterfalls and streams were larger, and we could just walk beside them all the way deeper and deeper into the mountains! The walk was pretty easy, not too steep except for the part coming down from the road. There was a small stream area which we had to cross, but it had some rocks where you could jump or walked across on. I had boots, so I wasn't too worried. It wasn't like those river that I once fell into in Vietnam Sapa area. Here, it was hardly knee deep for the crossing. But the wider ones were of course, basically a running stream/river. 

The landscape was just amazing. Yeah, it really made you believe in fairies here!

Water running down. Legend has it that if you hold your face into the water and count to 7, you will get beautiful youthful skin. The water was ice cold. 

Land of a thousand waterfalls. 

Just let your imagination go wild here. Can you imagine fairies bathing here? 

We were there in April, so I guess it's not full summer yet. Should be pretty cold!

Here's me walking into my dream world <3

Selfie with a mysterious pyramid shaped black hill in front. I think we decided to turn back from this point so that we can make it back to the parking lot in time. Our groups all walked at their own pace and distance. Some went further ahead, some didn't venture far but decided to sat down and enjoyed some snacks or photo taking. If I was on my own, I guess I would have spend half a day walking all the way in and half a day walking out! I would have love to see how deep the fairy pool goes!

Manchester/Scotland 2025 - Isle of Skye Tour Glen Sligachan and The Cuillin (3/3)

You're gonna see a lot of road photos, cause it all signified road trip! I love a good road trip! So I've put most of the road photos as the first photo to get you into the vibe of it. Also to show you what the roads are really like where we were travelling at. Some might meet your expectation of what a cold and cloudy Scotland would look like! And some will just blow your mind how blue the sky can be at other times, all usually within the same day :D 

See here? Same morning, not even across the day yet. We are still at the same spot, but you can see the blue skies are out! There is only one Sligachan Old Bridge in the Isle of Skye, and we were still at the same location as you can see the bridge in the photo. I'm always hoping that the blue sky direction is where we were headed next!

Above is an enhanced photo, emphasising on the beautiful water running down from the mountains. It is such a Lord of the Ring vibe!

Landscape view of Sligachan Old Bridge. No cars are allowed on it, but you could walk over it.

First stop of our 2nd day of tour to Isle of Skye, it was time to move on to our next destination soon.

But I guess most of us were still captivated by the view of The Cuillin. It was such a lovely walk here. I think the bridge kinda faded into the background once you see the mountains 

And the thought of being able to just walked like you could walked right into a painting of a landscape of The Cuillin.

So beautiful. There is a man in the photo above in jeans standing at the lower right of the photo. Can you spot him? That is how awesome this view is when you're standing there. Simply amazing!

Not forgetting the crystal clear water running all over the place. You have to wear boots here in Scotland. Waterproofed preferred. The rain isn't as heavy as those in South East Asia where even boots and an umbrella can't save you. Here it's just puddles and running water with an occasional shower that doesn't really last long.

As we're driving away and towards our next destination, I caught this shot of the mountains with all the little path running inwards towards it. I would just love to walk in there. It would be one of those adventure walk where you don't really know where you'll end up at, those "why are we doing this" kind of adventure that made no sense, yet so memorable :P

Soon we left the mountains behind us, and green pasture with dreamy dark waters in loch started to appear in our view again.

It's called the Isle of Skye, and I'm wondering just how big is this island? How many mountains, and lakes, and valley does it have? It's almost as if Mother Nature decided to build an amusement park, and this was the result of it. 

Bye Bye Cuillin. I don't know if I'll ever see you again. If I do, I'll probably be an old lady by then :P

Manchester/Scotland 2025 - Isle of Skye Tour Glen Sligachan and The Cuillin (2/3)

Walking between where our bus left us, and where the Sligachan bridges are, in the midway point, you could venture out further and towards the mountains, and here you will see the statue of Collie and MacKenzie. I love this photo of them above. I don't really know who they were when I visited this place, but now that I've finished watching The Outlander Season 1, I can better appreciate the history of The Highlands. Our guide did told us the stories of the clans of the Highlands and the Battle of Cullonden and the Jacobite Rising, but it was still hard to really imagine it. But after watching the series, and being on those Highland, boy do you really remember them well!

Some of the photos of the incredible landscape here. It was hard to pick which to upload here. Everything was just so breathtaking here. 

 

You can see the statue of the two man in the middle, as well as the path to walk there. It was pretty call to walk out into the open area. It was still early morning, so I was glad the wind wasn't too strong when we were there. 

Here is a different view, with some adjustment of the saturation of the photo. I've been toying with a lot of my photos recently as my mobile camera is pretty shite. I'm using a Pixel 9a phone, that seems to take photos with dark mode on, making everything look so gloomy. I have had to edit almost every single photo I wanted to post because of this, and so have come to learn how to tune exposure and saturation and contrast to enhance the photos I've taken. 

The official info of Collie and MacKenzie. There are so many clans on the Highlands. On top of my head, these are the ones I can recall: Campbell, MacDonalds, MacKenzie, and Collies. After watching Outlander, I know can recall Fraser and Stuart/Steward. Actually on our little tour, there was a family of MacKenzie from the US with us. I'm now also familiar with the story of Bonnie Prince Charles, and Queen Mary. I tell you, travelling is good for expending your knowledge and your world, as do reading and watching historical series :P

Walking all the up to the area of the statue beyond that gate.

The two friends looking out towards the mountain. Here is a nice write up from another blog about these two historical figure. No point for me to write it up in my own words again when the stories are already out there :P

A close up side view.

And a wefie of me and my husband with the statue and the mountains behind us. I guess it's kinda true, it's hard to get a good photo of yourself in Scotland because the wind here is crazy!