Traveling the world, renovating a cottage in Scotland: life isn't perfect and mistakes have been made. But we keep going, and maybe laugh at ourselves a little bit.
In the spirit of keeping it real, here are ten mistakes we've made since moving to the Isle of Skye. Some are funny. Some were expensive. All of them are true.
1. Nicking a stone wall with the rental car mirror
As someone new to driving on the left, I misjudged it ONE TIME and here we are. The single-track roads on Skye are not forgiving. There's a stone wall on one side and a ditch on the other, and when another car comes toward you, somebody has to squeeze into a passing place. I squeezed wrong. The mirror survived (barely). My pride did not.
2. Trying to get anything done on a Sunday
Nope. Nada. Not going to happen. The hardware store is closed. The tip is closed. The building supply place doesn't even pretend to be open. How many Sundays did we drive to the hardware store before we learned? Too many. This is an island that takes its rest day seriously, and honestly, I've come to respect it.
3. Bus lane ticket and parking tickets
Too focused on staying on the correct side of the road to read the signs, apparently. These tickets just show up in the post, because, as our British friend said, "we are highly surveilled." Helpful.
4. Getting devoured by midges
A few days of clearing the garden in summer and we were absolutely miserable. Midges are tiny, relentless, and travel in clouds that look like they were CGI'd into your day. We're now stocked up on Smidge repellent and head nets. We look ridiculous. We no longer care.
5. Showing up to cafes when they're closed
Always, always double-check the hours listed on Google AND their Instagram page before heading somewhere. Island businesses keep island hours. Which is to say, they keep whatever hours feel right that particular day. This is charming until you've driven twenty minutes for a coffee that isn't happening.
6. Not being ready for tourist season
We arrived on Skye in January, in the dead of winter. Quiet roads, barely any tourists, the island practically to ourselves. Sounds ideal, right? It was — until summer hit and the single-track roads filled up with campervans driven by people even more confused than I was. Everything takes twice as long to get to between June and August, and by then I still hadn't fully gotten the hang of driving on the left.
7. Not making an appointment for the recycling center
We figured: small town, no big deal, just take things to the dump. We got an earful from the employee when we rocked up without an appointment. In our defense, where we come from, you don't need an appointment to throw things away. Lesson learned. Scotland has systems. We respect the systems now.
8. Not having housing lined up
When summer rolled around, we couldn't find an affordable rental near the cottage in Broadford, so we ended up staying outside Portree. That's over 35 minutes each way. Every day. Three hours of round-trip driving just to work on the cottage. While paying premium summer rental rates. Do not recommend.
9. Buying a van with only three seats
We did not anticipate how long it would take to find and install approved back seats. The silver lining: since we had to rent a car anyway, it threw me straight into driving on the left side instead of putting it off forever. Which I absolutely would have done.
10. Underestimating the weather
Storm Eowyn knocked our power out for four days. Four days. Carol and the kids were in Glasgow at the time, which was its own adventure (sheltering in a city you don't know well in the worst storm Scotland has seen in years). I was stuck stateside for work. We were spread across two countries during a proper storm and nobody had power or good cell service. Not our finest hour as a family logistics unit.
Are we still making mistakes? Absolutely. But they're getting smaller. And some of them are turning into the best stories we have.
New to following our Scotland adventure? Stick around. There will be more mistakes. We'll be honest about all of them.
