I have made the rookie error of reading Fiona's blog before writing this, which means that I can now only remember her excellent turn of phrase and will
enscribe but a poor parody of her musings (see what I mean?). But here goes.
We went to Skye! First we went to Fife on Thursday night to avoid the bridge roadworks and ensure an early start in the morning. Then we spent about an hour
squidging everything into the
landrover so we didn't really set off that early after all, but hey, I got to climb on the roof of the car to lock the
roofbox, so that was cool. I was preoccupied with the minor debacle of a freelance report I was coordinating. I'd set off to the Land of No Mobile Signal leaving my lovely and creatively talented but unfortunately completely disorganised designer in charge and phoned and emailed him a few times to make sure said report actually made it to the printers by its deadline. That faff notwithstanding, we made good time up north, screeching to a brief halt only when we saw a sign which advertised 'Cakes, coffee and other yummy things'. It did not disappoint.
All of which landed us in Glen Brittle on the west coast of Skye after driving across the bridge - I was taken aback at how short it is, having expected a Forth Road Bridge type affair - and fitted in a quick look round a ruined castle in the south of the island. The campsite was not as dire as I had prepared myself for, and we set up tents and got dinner going while admiring the view over to Rum (or was it Mull?). I 'helped' Fiona by putting her tent poles through the wrong loops - turns out her tent goes up outside first, not inside like mine. Which makes much more sense if it's raining.
I do like my tent, an excellent purchase in Australia when I walked the
Overland Track with it on my back. I'd bought it because it was the lightest model I could find and I do hate carrying a heavy pack, but it is also spacious (for one person) and secure. And easy to put up, obviously.
It is also waterproof, which you'd think was a given quality in a tent, but Colin's proved otherwise. We woke on the first day to that sound of rain on a tent roof which can (occasionally) be comforting and homely but quickly becomes overlaid with the nasty realisation that at some point you're going to have to go out in it. We awaited Colin's arrival in the
landrover, comparing notes on a night of broken sleep. The camp warden had told us that it was much colder than was usual in September and I'd been glad of a cosy
Baffie sleeping right at the bottom of the sleeping bag (how she breathes down there remains a mystery) to warm me. However, because it was the first night both dogs had been restless in their strange surroundings and took it in turns to wake up and squeak. When
Baffie did go to sleep her snores echoed around the campsite.
Good old Colin arrived, having left Edinburgh at some ungodly hour in the morning. We weren't sure if he'd be disappointed if we suggested an alternative to walking, but he jumped at the chance of a trip to the
Talisker distillery instead. At this point we were still naively hoping that it would stop raining the next day! Anyway,
Fi,
Ailsa and I went to the pub while the others did the whisky tour and then we did a couple of short walks in the rain that afternoon. One led to what would have been a spectacular waterfall, though it appeared
through the mist as only a distant
white smudge and some atmospheric background noise.
We slept better the second night, probably due to being good and tired, and
Ailsa was particularly cheery in the morning. Though still showery, there were dry patches and we decided to walk out along the coast. Originally we'd wanted to do a walk into the foothills of the
Cuillin, but the book pronounced this boggy. The coast walk was mostly on a good hard track, with only a short section of bog towards the end, when we tracked down a neolithic chambered cairn. Much fun was had finding suitable places to ford streams, some of which had become minor torrents in the rain. At one point the dogs had to be tossed over a particularly deep and fast stretch, but mostly we managed with only swearing, jumping, slipping and hopping. The sun came out briefly for a ten minute rest by the cairn, then it rained again most of the way back!
We had dinner at the Old Inn in
Carbost, which was an excellent pub. It boasted live folk music (not that we heard much as it was in another room and we were next to a table of rowdy walkers telling unfunny jokes), great pub food, a pool table and more types of
Talisker than you could shake a stick at. To avoid unnecessary trips to the far away camp loos in the night, I stuck to wine and whisky, which seemed to do the trick. And speaking of tricks I even joined in the card games and learnt contract whist. Rock and roll!
We drove merrily back to Glen Brittle where, as soon as I was zipped up in my sleeping bag, it became
apparent that a minor hurricane had taken up residence. My tent was making a noise similar to someone enthusiastically applauding a particularly deaf
maestro, and whenever it let up the neighbouring tents decided to take over.
Baffie passed out, exhausted by her adventures on the walk, but woke up in the middle of the night (I having spent the intervening period staring at the seam of my tent) and decided to be scared of the noise. She emerged from the bottom of the sleeping bag for a cuddle and to sleep with her head on the 'pillow', which was fine until she stretched out luxuriously and the sleeping bag's zip started to unzip itself under strain. Rather than sleep with a cold back or holding the zip together, I tried to wake up the pooch to persuade her to move. My god that animal can sleep! She's like the canine equivalent of me. She ended up on her back with all four legs in the air while I held her chest with both hands and waggled her back and forth, occasionally stopping to check she was still breathing. To no avail: she simply snoozed on with tongue lolling and ears flapping. Eventually I used stealth tactics and took all the covers away so she
awoke in 10 seconds, complained of the cold and returned to her foot-warming position.
All told, we did not have a particularly restful night and Colin discovered that a tent with no lining (who knew such a piece of shit existed?) had a
tendency to gush water every time he touched the side, which was a lot. But we are made of stern stuff and even managed to just catch the ferry to
Raasay. I can't remember now what made us late. Oh yes, the car keys were missing I think. Someone once bought Fiona those keys which, when you whistle of shout for them, make a noise so you can find them. But they ended making the noise all the time, whenever they
called the dogs or something, so were ditched for being annoying. I think the only solution is an adaptation of a rather funky new laptop we have at work which logs you on by recognising your finger print. No need for keys and you can't forget your fingers!
Raasay was lovely, I'm really glad we went. The important thing to remember about
Raasay is that is it in fact pronounced '
Rassay' with short 'a', or so my know-it-all boyfriend informs me by laughing every time I get it wrong. And he hasn't even been there!
We did a short, flat walk along a coast path that was easy to follow until the very end, when we got lost.
Morag had turned back earlier and we'd left her with the map and directions. Duh. We were trying to get to the ruined village of
Hallaig, which was deserted in the clearances. As it happened, I wasn't too bothered about seeing the village close to. We could see the outline of the ruins on the way, and I found the path wandering through the birch woods much more appealing It was autumn overload with orange bracken, purple heather and yellow birch, not to mention fungi the size of soup plates. There was a cairn overlooking a wave-washed and
rainbowed bay with a poem by an apparently famous poet called Sorely
Maclean. Fiona has reproduced it in full on
her blog, so take a look. It's worth mentioning that, other than a damp couple near the beginning of our fist coast walk, we didn't see anyone else on our walks the whole time in Skye. Near
Hallaig, the absence of people made it a particularly evocative.
We dropped Col back at the ferry and went on to discover one of my favourite bits of the trip. A while back I'd read something, possibly in the Scotsman, about a guy who built a 10 mile road with his bare hands. Well, presumably he had some sort of shovel or something, but he dug the stone, measured the camber, stuck it all together all on his own with no mechanical help. It was to get to some tiny settlement that people were leaving because the government wouldn't put in a road. I'd been quite taken with the story but had forgotten all about it until we found ourselves on the very road! I hadn't even known it was on
Raasay! Well
Callum's road was the
twistingest,
turniest single track road ever and I was glad we were in the
landrover. Eventually we got to the end and turned round and did it all again going back.
We planned a quiet last night at the campsite using up our food and ended up having a picnic in the car as the rain came on again. We gave up and headed back to the pub for cards and warmth until we were drooping with tiredness and got a few hours sleep. We'd originally been planning to move camp sites half way through the trip, but as it was such a faff getting stuff all packed up and we'd had to miss a couple of the fair weather walks we'd ended up staying on. After much discussion, we picked
Macleod's Maidens for our final walk. This nine mile route was another coastal walk which ended at a trio of sea stacks. We wanted to do
Macleod's Tables - two flat-topped hills nearby - but felt they would be just too boggy and steep. Skye is basically a big peat bog with some mountains sticking out! Somehow, even a slope so steep that the path rises level with your eyes can be oozing water - surely it should all sink to the bottom?
We'll have to come back in better weather for some of the other walks, and maybe leave the dogs behind for what the book describes as 'handwork'. For amusement value we looked up the most difficult walk in the book, which was part of the
Cuillin ridge. It was described as a difficult
scramble with 'some interesting situations' - can't wait!
Anyway, the Maiden's was certainly not demanding in any technical way but was rather long and undulating. When we eventually spotted the sea stacks the wind was blowing so hard that my camera kept telling me that the picture was blurred and asking did I want to save it anyway? Unsurprising that the picture was blurred when I was crouching behind a hillock near the edge of a 40 foot cliff in the rain and wind to take it. The way back seemed strangely longer. I'm sure someone slipped an extra mile or two in between the beginning of the woodland plantation and the road, and we were all truly sopping when we got back to the
landrover. I think the Maiden's was the right choice as the Tables would have been miserable in the wind.
Luckily, salvation awaited in the form of the Three Chimneys, where the lovely staff took one look at us and - no! they didn't call the police! - they made us coffee and cake and moved back our dinner reservation so we could spend a good half hour each scraping the moss from under our toes ('I haven't seen my feet since Sunday',
Morag cheerfully remarked.) Dinner was everything I'd hoped for: good, fresh, local, seasonal food. Good portions - not teeny artsy
fartsy stuff but not so much that we felt too stuffed. I had a mussel risotto followed by venison which came with tiny baby turnips. We all tried each others' food though, which is a great way to get a feel for a restaurant.
Hil's salmon and
Ailsa's aubergine salad were particularly fine.
We retired so our beautiful clean, huge rooms. I'd been expecting to share a double bed plus
campbed arrangement in the family room, but we had full size single beds for two of us and a small double sofa bed made up for Mo, who pronounced it most comfy. I was asleep before she turned off the light.
Breakfast in the morning was another highlight, with tasty muesli, fruit, CHEESE! and smoked meat as well as endless coffee.
Then we drove back to Fife and thence to Edinburgh and my lunch break is coming to an end as well as my typing ability so I will say only that it has taken two days to dry my tent and my boots and still squelchy. But it was great! And I will definitely go back to Skye and do some scrambling and hill walks. I'll just make sure I take my new waterproof trousers with me.
