May 1, 2 & 3: Smoo Cave, Nick does Suilven solo & the best drive in Scotland
We first woke to heavy rain beating down on
the windshield and almost a whiteout all around. I fell in and out of sleep until sunlight
began to pour through the windows and it was impossible to continue
sleeping. The mountains in front of us
had a fresh coat of snow from the night before.
After a small breakfast in the car,
followed by a coffee and scone from a small café in Tongue, we head off toward
Durness to visit Smoo Cave, which was highlighted on the map as being
surrounded by lovely beaches. The
weather had cleared up and the blue sky was filled with white clouds like
cotton wool pulled taut so they were thin and streaky above us.
We wandered vaguely down toward the cave
after an hour or so of scenic driving, and saw a sign for guided tours. “Just
enter the waterfall cave and yell for Colin,” the sign said. Along a wooden platform, covered in overhead,
we walked until we came to the sinkhole, where a waterfall sent spray into all
sides of the cave. An older man with
white hair was pottering around in the back of the cave, obscured by a rocky
bridge formation. Nicholas called out to
him and he set about, using a wooden oar to pull his way toward us on an
inflatable dinghy.
The view across the Kyle of Tongue, after most of the fog had cleared
The view from across the Kyle after all the fog had cleared
Our trusty Vauxhall
Skipping into Smoo Cave
“Hello Colin,” said Nick.
“Mm, yer, you’ll need helmets,” he said,
turning off his head torch and walking us back toward the sign. Another couple, probably mid-fifties, were
putting on some helmets to join the tour as well. “Make sure yer helmets are all tight and not
wobblin’ around,” he added.
Colin looked like somebody who spent a lot
of time in caves. His fingernails were
slightly overgrown, giving him a distinctly mole-like appearance. His white beard and moustache was yellowed
around the mouth from excessive smoking and he was balding on the crown of his
head. He was very fair, with pale blue
eyes that had a mad scientist glint in them.
I liked him immediately.
The other couple followed us down a ladder
and onto the rubber boat, and Colin took us around the watery cave, showing us
the distinct changes in rock before and after the Ice Age. He tore up a few pieces of white bread and
tossed them into the water.
“Gotter feed the Smoo Cave Piranha’s,” he
said. I laughed. “They’re actually brown trout,” he admitted,
“I usually get the American’s with that one.
Yer not American are yer?”
I shook my head, explaining we were from
Australia. The other couple was from
Argyll.
The main waterfall in Smoo Cave
We all clamoured out of the boat, and
Nicholas was delegated as Torch Holder Extraordinaire, because he showed the
most coordination out of our little group, and the LEDs in some of Colin’s
lights weren’t working.
“Did yer come in here and feel like yer’d
been here before?” Colin asked Nick and I.
“All this rock was formed back durin’ the Supercontinent when
Australiyer and Scotland were part of Gondwana.”
“We thought the cliffs all looked a lot
like Victoria when we were coming through Durness,” I said.
“Aye, it all was one,” said Colin. “Yer’ll be feelin’ right at home.”
He showed us some chert in this part of the
cave, rubbing it together to create small sparks. “This stuff’s almost as hard as flint,
because they won’t have had no flint in here durin’ the Mesolithic when people
lived in this cave,” he said.
I rummaged in my pocket. “I’ve got some flint!” I said, pulling a
handful of pieces out of my Goretex.
Colin took a look at the pieces of rock in
my hands. “Aye, and where’d you find
this?” he asked.
I explained that we had found it in
Stronsay.
“This stuff is no’ found in Orkney,” he
said, turning it over in his hands, “this here is from southern England, which
goes to show they used it as ballast!
And it’s still showin’ up.” He
continued to turn it between its fingers, deep in thought. Then he handed it back to me.
The end of the main cave, where Colin had continued exploring, diving down to dig away underground in the pools where we now stood.
Colin continued walking us through the
cave, explaining his theories for a much larger cave behind the one we were
in. He also believed that the Mesolithic
people would have stood on ground level 4m or so below where we were, but
layers of peat and rubble had built up so we were much higher now.
When the tour was over, we gave him some
money and the other couple thanked him and wandered away. We continued to talk caves, asking him about
his expeditions.
Earlier in the trip, Nicholas had been
looking at the map and seen a set of caves near Suilven (which we hike
tomorrow, if the weather is good) called the Bone Caves, where a polar bear
skeleton was found. We got talking about
other caves in the surrounding areas, and Nicholas asked about the Bone
Caves. It turned out that Colin had been
part of the team to uncover the caves and find the loot inside.
“I read there was a polar bear skeleton
inside,” said Nick. “The only polar bear
skeleton found in Britain.”
“Aye, we thought it was a polar bear at
first!” Colin replied quickly, “It was nay.
It was a cave bear! An extinct
breed of bear that died out during the last Ice Age!” The excitement in his voice was rising. “See, it would be vera nice to find a polar
bear in Scotland, but a FOOKING CAVE BEAR –“ he started gesticulating wildly, with a half rolled cigarette between his fingers, “
– with leg bones this long, and this wide! Aye, a cave bear!
“I found the oldest lynx in Scotland, too,”
he added. “6.5 thousand years old. The oldest to be found in Scotland. The next oldest was – guess how old it was!”
We shook our heads to say we didn’t know.
“Aye, the next oldest was two thousand
years old! Two thousand! AMATEURS!”
We told him we’d head to the Bone Caves and
have a look, and he said there were some climbers from Somerset there now and
they’d probably have lots of beer. “Tell ‘em yer a friend of Colin, and he said
yer can have some beer!”
Colin's inflatable vessel
Smoo Cave
Laughing, we left him to have a smoke
before the next group of tourists came about and wanted a boat ride. In the winter season, he didn’t run boats,
but worked full time digging around in the caves, working along the fault line. We gathered that he had used to work in
Edinburgh University, as some kind of geologist, and had got fed up with the
institution and decided to go back to exploring and digging through rocks. He left us pretty inspired and in a really
good mood, so we kept driving.
We drove through Kinlochbervie, through an
old fishing town that felt very empty and quiet on a Friday afternoon. Clouds were forming overhead and it was
getting close to the time we could check in, so we kept driving toward
Clashnessie, where our AirBnB was. A
very long windy road, and one deer-spot later, we arrived, filthy, to be
greeted by a very friendly puppy named Bruno and our hosts. We popped down to an excellent pie shop for
dinner, scoffing down a pair of mushroom, chestnut and red wine pies. 10/10 would recommend.
Kinlochbervie
Kylesku Bridge
Driving to Clashnessie
For Saturday we had planned to climb a
mountain called Suilven, which isn’t a Munro, but gives fantastic views across
Assynt and the sea. Nicholas ended up
tackling this one himself, while I stayed home for some well-needed rest. I’ll probably add in a couple of pictures
that Nicholas took on the hike – he said that the views over Assynt were the
best he’d seen in Scotland. He came home
with mud all up his gators to his knees.
“Definitely boggy,” he said.
Nicholas' view from Suilven
That night we had dinner with the lovely
couple we were staying with, and the man, Nigel, proved to be an excellent
cook. It was the most veggies we’d had
in a little while (and well needed!) with course upon course of salads and
stewed root veggies, followed by rhubarb tarts made from their own home-grown
rhubarb. Nigel’s an artist, and we
stayed up late chatting about land art with him, and residencies and all kinds
of things. Bruno sat in front of the
wood burner, keeping toasty and warm.
The following morning we left Clashnessie,
and head on toward Skye. Our original
plan was to head straight to Kyle of Lochalsh, but the couple he climbed
Kilimanjaro with suggested another route, often considered to be The Best Drive
In Scotland. It certainly earned that
name, and we drove along winding roads with huge, towering mountains on all
sides and beautiful lochs between them.
The weather could have been referred to as dismal, with wind so strong
it pushed against the car and made driving difficult at times. The rain came down sideways and, for all the
beauty of the roads, every time we jumped out to take a picture or two, the
lens was covered in water droplets.
Ardvreck Castle
By the time we reached Applecross, the sun
had reappeared and the rain had begun to subside. This was 8 hours after we left Clashnessie,
though. Animals came out on all sides to
enjoy the sunshine. Large herds of deer
were walking alongside the car, a black sheep licked clean a tiny baby lamb
that was still joined to her via umbilical cord beside us, and shaggy baby Highland
cows that looked like teddy bear stared at us as we drove past.
A black ewe, just as we approached Applecross. When we drove up beside her, she was still licking her tiny lamb clean.
A strange, pyramid-shaped mountain we spied over on Skye
Looking over the sea to Skye
It was the Sunday night of a bank holiday
and Applecross was filled to the brim with tourists on motorbikes, so we drove
up to a viewpoint highlighted on the map.
There were three caravans up there already (how they managed to maneuver
around the hairpin bends, we don’t know) but they’d drawn their curtains
already because it was after 9pm. I had
to pop some codeine and got really drowsy really quickly, but was determined to
see the full moon. Nicholas listened to
a Harry Potter audiobook we found on my phone, and woke me up every time the
clouds cleared enough that the moon was visible. For an hour or so, I drifted in and out of
sleep, regularly shaken awake when the moon poked out from behind the thick
cloud cover.
It was extremely bright and hung heavily
and yellow in the sky. I had to set the shutter speed to something
like 1/6000 because it was so bright.
When the clouds cleared almost completely, we were bathed in so much
light it was hard to sleep.
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