Once the rain cleared, we headed to ‘walk’ the Old Man of Storr. Nobody here hikes. The term just isn’t used. Instead, they walk. After an evening looking for dinosaur footprints and camping at the beach at An Corran, we hiked – er, walked – the Quirrang. Another popular Skye walk. So popular, there was a traffic jam in the parking area that kept us there for an extra half hour. It turns out there was a cruise ship at Portree and the Island was swamped with people.

Afterward, we simple drove to coast and looked for a nice place to pull over for the night. The Scottish public land use laws say that you’re allowed to camp anywhere on ‘unenclosed land’ and that’s exactly what we intend to do while we’re here. No fence = no problem.

We foolishly thought we could hop a ferry from Mallig to the Isle of Skye by just showing up the next morning (and maybe we could have) but a quick check on the internet showed the ferry was sold out for the next week. Of course, there is a bridge to Skye, but requires a fairly long drive around various peninsulas from here, but this allowed us a quick stopover at the southern end of Loch Ness to see the locks at Fort Augustus.

Before we made it to Skye, we spotted the Eilean Donan castle off the road in Dornie and decided to stop over for the night and make a few small repairs to the bus. We’ve got zipper issues.

After a good night’s rest, we had a big day of hikes on Skye. The Fairy Pools, Niest Point and Coral Beach. We even managed time for lunch at the Clam Shack.

We’ve been flirting with the idea of “upgrading” to something a little bigger one day. The kid is getting close to adult-size and the bus feels like its getting smaller every day. So, we took a detour to go look at an 80’s Karmann Gipsy near Leeds. We’ve been curious about these since seeing the T2 versions in Brazil, but they are quite rare to find. Only about 800 of these T3 versions were made. Unfortunately, this one was a pretty poor example. It had problems – mostly due to neglect from the owner. It also just felt too ‘big’. After driving the narrow hedge-lined roads in Wales, we’re hesitant to get anything much wider than our bus. Thus, we’re looking for something bigger, but not larger. No problem.

We called it a night in the Lakes District and headed north to Glasgow to meet our buddy Andrew. We had tickets to see Ray Lamontagne and Bode had a dog-sitting assignment. A rare hotel night was in order. If you haven’t stumbled upon the Find Momo books or the internet-famous Instagram account of @AndrewKnapp then do yourself a favor and go find Momo. Andrew has been traveling around Europe all year, working on a new book. His dad had joined him for a a month-long trip through the UK in his new-to-him T5 Westfalia he bought in Spain.

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We explored the park, Angela paddled down the Wye River to the literary mecca of Hay-On-Wye, and we hit a few pubs down to Crickhowell. The weather just keps improving and a Bode keeps insisting that he’s actually *hot*. We’re not sure how well Southern Spain is going to work out if he is hot in Wales in the spring.

From there, we drove north up through Snowdonia National Park and eventually toured the castle in Conway.

The West Wales Falconry is run by a father-son team that decided to turn their love of falconry into an enterprise. Some are rescued, others are retired from show business, some were purchased as babies to train. These birds are all well-loved and taken care of, and fed meals day-old male chicks from an egg factory (where they aren’t needed).

We walked around the aviary and were introduced to all the birds. Before each flight, the birds were weighed so we knew how many chicks they should eat during their flight. Every day, these guys track the birds’ weights and flights and adjust their diets based on that, as well as temperature and season.

We’d walk out to a neighboring field with a bird and start to walk around. Most of the birds are food-driven and ‘lazy’, so they’d go between the nearest post and our gloved hand.

I will admit, having a chick head placed on your gloved hand is a bit disconcerting, but soon a bird of prey is swooping towards you and you forget about that.

The small African scops owl can’t fly very far, and isn’t motivated enough to go long distances. This particular owl, Bilbo, even landed on my head so that he didn’t have to make it all the way to the next post.

The Harris hawk, which was raised in the owner’s bedroom right after hatching, will fly to you across the field without expecting food every time. The owners have a ‘team’ of these hawks and use them for pest control in the winter. They are hired by dairy farms to keep the starlings from Russia away from the cow’s food. The farm they work loses $1500 a day in food from these birds, so the Harris hawks are hired to scare them away.

Most birds landed claws first and snatched food from your glove, but the Australian kookaburra was head and bill heavy and grabbed the food first and then landed. We weren’t expecting to see an Australian sea bird, but this one had retired from a amusement park and now gets to fly free in Wales.

The largest bird, a blue eagle was only 2.5 kilos, but it was huge and pretty overwhelming when it landed on you.

It was an incredible experience, and Bode loved it. He’s talking about getting a hawk now, which might be difficult for us. Maybe we can convince him to go to another falconry soon instead.

More importantly, Salisbury has the Magna Carta. Bode’s road school history lesson took care of itself today. Written in Latin on sheepskin.

Aside from being a nice town, this also happens to be where the recent Russian spy Novichock poisoning occurred and a large section of park in town was roped off with bobbies on every corner protecting the crime scene. Weird.

We drove north again through the Wilshire canola fields on our way up to Avebury – a sort of poor-man’s Stonehenge. Interesting, but it didn’t hold our interest too long in the rain.

So, we decided to bolt further West into our next country – Wales! (Yes, it’s a country );

We heard it said that going to Wales is like stepping back in time. We sort of have to agree. And, it’s beautiful.

We camped on a farm in Abereiddy along the coastal trail paths and went for some exceptionally pleasant sunny walks along the coast. We were so close to Ireland that my phone was picking up Irish cell towers.

We made a trip out to see the “smallest town in the UK” at St. Davids and then up to Fishguard. We’re still working up the courage to order some local cuisine.