Independent overland travel through Africa in a Unimog called Moglet

A pretty uneventful night passed, apart from me being awake for about half of it, trying to convince my back to chill out so I could go to sleep. Eventually however, it was too late to go to sleep and time to get up, and by crikey was I a grumpy moo!

We carried on along the little road that followed the lochside, seeing what we could see until the end. We'd also spied an advertising board at the start of the road for a place that did handmade celtic jewellery, which we were keen to have a look at. The road twisted and turned its way along, the rain started to fall, my back was still hurting and generally things weren't as good as they could have been :-(

We made it all the way to Elgol, parked up for about 3 seconds and turned around! We found the jewellery place on the way back, but it wasn't quite what we were expecting - much as you couldn't help but admire the craftsmanship of some of the pieces, paying £4,800 for a ring is a little out of our price range!

Feeling suitably down at heel, we got back into Moglet as soon as was polite and headed back around the Loch to catch up again with the main road. Our target for the day was a town called Uig (pronounced oo-ig), where we were going to park up for the night. On the way through, we planned to have a little stop in Portree as we'd heard it was a good place to spot eagles! When we eventually arrived there, we didnt see any eagles but we did spy a suspicious looking building which had potentially a cafe attached - toast-op approaching! As a double-whammy, we also found it to be a cinema, although there wasn't anything showing at the time we were there, who knows for the journey back! We did manage to have some toast though! :-)

Full of lovely toast, we were back driving eventually and made a bee-line straight for Uig. The village is almost at the end of the road, and we'd already called ahead to the campsite a few days ago to make sure they were open, and to also check if they were ok with taking delivery of a couple of things for us. Jason had seen a backpack online that he liked the look of, and we'd been struggling to find OS maps of Skye in the shops so thought getting them from Amazon would be a good plan. The campsite owner was fine with this, so on arrival we also collected our first post of the trip - didn't really matter that we'd sent it to ourselves, it was just nice to have something waiting for us!

We paid for a couple of nights up front, put a load of washing on and settled down for the night. Some hours later, and several quids lighter after getting the washing dried, we were tucked up in bed and looking forward to a lie in and a lazy stop-at-home day tomorrow. I needed to chill out and get my back sorted, as well as fancying having a go at making my own batch of the awesomeness that is Clootie Dumpling! :-)

And by crikey what a lazy day it was! We both had a much needed lie in to catch up on the sleep, then walked ourselves a couple of miles to the nearest shop for a few bits and bobs. Stocked up, we walked back and sat about in Moglet reading the paper and eating sweeties for an hour or so, then I put my (metaphorical) chefs hat on and had a bash at The Clootie! Easy enough recipe but I'm not sure the double pan stove top cooking method is the most efficient. It smelled gorgeous most of the time, like a really rich fruit cake or maybe christmas pudding, but the middle section refused to be anything other than very gooey. I'm just going to have to make another batch sometime soon, but maybe try just cooking it in the oven! In the meantime, I have a tupperware box full of crumbled up fruitcake thats going spare - I'm thinking maybe just serve it up with some custard for pudding...waste not, want not!

We'd also had a bit of a chat about what to do next. Being parked up in a campsite next to a ferry terminal had got us thinking - why not the Outer Hebrides? A flick through a brochure showed us it was much cheaper than we'd imagined - around £40 for a single trip for something of Moglet size, so we thought why the hell not and decided to go in a day or two! This making it up as you go along stuff really can be quite fun!

Next morning we decided to atone for our slovenliness of the day before and head off for a bit of a walk. But not before fortifications though - we had three slices of bacon that had to be eaten that day or they'd need to go in the bin, so it was as good an excuse as any for a bit of a fry up! Jason decided to have a go at the Clootie, so I put that in with the bacon into his sandwich - very tasty, apparently! So, it might look like a pile of arse, but it tastes ok - we're half way there :-)

The walk was to a place called the Quiraing, which is on the east coast of Skye. Its a really dramatic and spectacular area of land, with massive landslips over the millennia leaving behind huge great pillars of rock with names like The Prison and The Needle. Finally we were finding something on Skye that really grabbed our attention! The walk itself was pretty cool, with just the right amount of jumping over squishy bits and clambering down and up rocky gullies with streams in them to make you feel a little bit adventurous. The visibility was incredible, perfect for the walk. And considering the previous two days had been drizzling and lots of low cloud, we were getting lucky again. There's a third section of the walk thats an optional extra called The Table, which is a bit more up Jasons street than mine - far too steep and slip slidey looking for me! So I parked my bum and he went off further up the hill with the guide book in hand. I expected him to be gone for half hour or so and then I'd be able to spy him on the decent, so you can imagine that after and hour and a half I was getting a little worried! But we had agreed that he would go up and come down by the same route and I'd wander a bit further along the path until I found somewhere a bit more sheltered from the wind, and wait for him there. After me pacing up and down for about half an hour, wondering where he was and whether he was ok, Jason appeared on the path behind me, having popped our somewhere entirely different and grinning from ear to ear at the scamper he'd just had! Hmmmm.....

We decided to head back to Moglet at this point and have a cup of tea, then make our way to have a look at another point on the OS map, the Old Man of Storr. Parked up next to us when we got back was a couple in a car who'd been admiring Moglet while we were gone, and Jason got chatting to the chap about possible camp sites on other islands in the Outer Hebrides. Maps all marked up with their top tips, we made our thanks and got on trucking over to the Old Man to have a little looksee.

By the time we arrived there, it was getting darker, the clouds were rolling in and a light rain had started to fall. Feeling a little uninspired after the grandeur of the previous spectacles, we decided not to tackle the walk today. Jason had a quick look at the information board while we were there, stopping to chat to a couple of chinese girls who were waiting for a bus - they still had over an hour to go before it arrived, and there was no shelter for them to hide in. They'd even resorted to tearing up their bus timetable for something to sit on! Taking pity on them, Jason hopped in the back of Moglet and chopped up an old rollmat to make a couple of sit mats for them, even raided the cupboards for a couple of snacky bits and a few sweets - he's a big softie really! :-)

Random tourists fed, we headed back to the campsite for an early night - it was a 9.30am ferry sailing to North Uist in the morning, which meant getting up several hours earlier than we'd had to do for some time!