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

You know how you booked a tour and can only expect the worst and hope for the best? Well, it seems my hope was coming true when our guide Jada says we will be visiting the Fairy Glen next! Yes! All things Fairy checked! Fairy Glen in translated to the Valley of the Fairies! And my goal was to visit all places that has the name "Fairy" in them! Thank you Jada for including this in our stop!

Our drive there allowed us to view The Cuillin mountains again, and there were still just as beautiful and mystical. 

But soon the road seems to started to twist and turn as our mini bus made it's way into what looked like a valley between smaller hills. 

Look how misty it was! I bet we were nearing the fairyland!

And just like that, things started to turn green and blue again! At some random road (I guess just random to us), our guide said we could alight and just walk right in. We were supposed to go in and explore on our own, and walk back again and our bus will pick us up. I think we got 1 hour or so here? 

So off we went. This was the view when we were walking in. Wasn't exactly what I expected from my imagination and research. But have faith! Onwards we walked. 

I mean, it wasn't matching the picture I had in my head of Fairy Glen, but it was still a nice walk with a nice view. The miniature hills around the water was very pretty. And although the path was rather narrow, it wasn't too crowded, so it was quite comfortable to walk around the water to reach where we were headed. 

Now will you look at that! I tell you, the weather in Scotland is truly magical! Just as we round the corner and came out into this landscape, I knew we were now at the Fairy Glen. 

You could see people standing on top of the hills. If you take a photo here, it would looked so cool! Like you've conquered a mountain! And I guess most people have the same idea, everyone wanted a photo here.

So this is the other side of the hill. There was actually a queue to walk up. And it was just a stony path up. 

This is what it looked like. And you could see people just waiting to take photos on top. 

Although it was cool, this wasn't the reason I badly wanted to come here. I wanted to see the spiral circle of Fairy Glen. That was all I wanted from this place. So I didn't made my up the hill. Instead, I went further along the path to look for my circle instead. 

There weren't any signs along the way. So I guess we just follow whatever looked like a reasonable path to walk on. The landscape was kinda quirky. It really was like a fairyland! Our guide even told us about the 7 things to observed when we were in the bus. Rules not to break least you shall anger the fairies that lived here. Might I just add that fairies in Scottish legends are a wee different from what your story books fairy might have been. Theirs was a bit erm, cheeky? Or maybe even nasty? Always up to mischief? That's what I heard anyway.

Soon I could see a vague image of a circle on the grass, and stones. 

There were also stone stacking around the ground. Initially I've wanted to come here and placed a rock on a tower like these too. I've done it on the beach of Sakurajima Japan before. But our guide had educated us that we should not walked outside designated path, and should not move any stones along the area as it would disrupt the fragile micro-environment here. So even thought I really wanted to leave a stone here, I didn't. To me, it was much more important to protect the place than to leave a mark, no matter how spiritually significant that may be.

Walking further, we also saw a different view.

Selfie with the miniature hills where fairy lives. Even on the glass of the hills, you could see circle patterns all around it.....mystical indeed, but it was probably just due to wind patterns perhaps.

And I did get my shot! My Fairy Glen magic circle <3

And me here in front of the fairy houses :) I bet that rock is where the fairy king and queen stays :P

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