For the second day in a row, we woke to the sound of an alarm. We started the day with a video call with the kids and then set about packing up - no mean task after eight nights here at the lighthouse.

I then began the tetris-like task of packing all the luggage into the car. If you recall my Day 4 blog post you will remember that our luggage was delivered to the cottage after missing our flight. So today was the first time I'd had to get it all in the car. It was tight but eventually it all fitted.

Luckily, it was only a short 20 minute drive before we dropped Mum - and her luggage - at Margaret and George's house where she will be staying for the next week.

Our familial responsibilities were now complete but we still had a couple of stops to make before leaving Aberdeen. First, we called into Asda to get all the groceries we'll need for the next few days; we expect them to be cheaper in Aberdeen than Portree. Then we popped in to see Catherine and Adam. Adam was somewhat under the weather this morning. He says the beer was no problem and he could handle the red wine but he really shouldn't have taken up Duncan's offer of a whisky or two at the end of the evening.

As we left Aberdeen around noon, it was raining heavily. Road signs were saying "Yellow Warning: Heavy Rain Expected". While yellow doesn't sound as bad as red or orange, just the fact that the weather warranted a colour designation at all was a bit of a worry.

We drove through the rain for two hours before making our first stop on the north shore of Moray Firth near Inverness in the first break in the weather we encountered.

From here, Linda took over the driving for a couple of hours as the weather slowly improved. Being in the passenger seat, I was able to take some photos out the window as we drove deeper into the highlands and encountered ever more impressive scenery. From a moving car, none of the photos were award winning, but here are a few anyway.

Eventually, we rejoined the main road and, turning a corner, got our first sight of the bridge to Skye.

Once across, we still had a drive of nearly an hour to reach our chalet in the north of the island. It took us a lot longer than that as we kept stopping to take photos (and enjoy stretching our legs a bit).

Our chalet has wonderful views over a loch on one side (hence it's name: "Lochview Chalet") and farmland on the other. We took a walk down the road to see some of the not-so-wild life.

The weather, which has been atrocious as we left Aberdeen and had slowly improved throughout the day, had now cleared completely and we were treated to a lovely sunset.