Day 225 - The search for seafood

See! It's supposed to rain here.

Now I know last week when I wrote my last post (sorry Ange for having you take on most of the writing this past week) I was going on and on about the beautiful sunny weather we had in Liverpool and on our arrival here. Well, it continues today and for the foreseeable future -- which for weather in the UK is about 48 hours at best!. When we planned this trip to the Isle of Skye, the intent was to go to an isolated part of the UK (which it is) where it is beautiful (which it is), and the weather would most likely be wet and therefore force me to stay inside and get some writing done (which it has not).  Seriously, I have put a precipitation map into today's post to show you what I had expected (and you can read more about the normal weather in Ange's post from yesterday). Now I know we are going into summer so perhaps that map is biased by the severe wet winters, but I have also checked with the UK Met Office and this time of year we average about 1 inch of rain per day and we have had only a sprinkle here and that was at 5 a.m. the other day, or so people say because I never saw it. The bottom line is that I have had to write while staring out at sunshine and it's driving me crazy.

Looking out over Broadford Bay

Never mind. At the end of the day, we had been invited by our new friends, Dave and Claire (more on them in tomorrow's post) who are here for the week in the cottage next to us.  They have brought their car and asked if we would join them in search for a seafood meal.  We agreed and the decision was made to go up the road about 16 miles to the north to the village of Broadford, population 620. It sits on Broadford Bay which forms part of the waterway north between the mainland and the Isle of Skye that eventually leads out into the open waters toward the North Atlantic.

The name "Broadford" is derived from Old Norse for the "wide bay" and the village has its roots in local agriculture. It lies in a relatively flatter area of the island and was the site of a cattle market that had its origins in the late 1700s. It's claimed that the Drambuie liqueur as we know it was created in Broadford after Bonnie Prince Charles gave a local innkeeper an earlier recipe for it. The area is also known for the local Skye marble which was quarried nearby and delivered by rail (that no longer exists) to Broadford where it could be shipped by boat. Aside from that, not much more to say about the village, except that it and an adjacent village are the second most populated settlements on the Isle of Skye, next to Portree which has a population of just over 4,000 and is the commercial centre of the island.

We can't take credit for this picture so taken from Google
images...can't you tell? Rain clouds in the distance.

Broadford remains a fishing port and so we thought we could get ourselves a decent seafood meal at one of its restaurants. On the outskirts of the village is the Red Skye and Claire had booked a table. Seafood all around for the four of us with local scallops and fishcakes for starters and Scottish salmon and local mussels for entrees. with the mussels in particular being a big hit!  They come out in large cauldrons (or it sure seemed that way) and were so numerous one couldn't eat them all even though they melted in one's mouth. Our friend Dave was the smart one: he had the starter-sized portion of mussels for his main.

Our seafood appetite satisfied, we headed back to the cottages and a good night's rest with tummy's full.

Ale of the Day: Skye Red, Isle of Skye Brewery, Uig, Isle of Skye