May 4, 5, 6 & 7: Over the sea to Skye, the Old Man, lots of fairies and Harry Potter
Warning: this post has a lot of pictures but pretty half-hearted text because I never wrote anything down because we were always listening to Harry Potter audiobooks.
We woke up on the morning of May the Fourth (may the fourth be with you!) surrounded by a thick cloud of fog on all sides. We drove through the foggy whiteout down a road of hairpin bends and twisted, windy stretches until we reached Kyle of Lochalsh. Popping into a café that advertised hot breakfast and Wifi, we could assess our plans for the Isle of Skye.
We woke up on the morning of May the Fourth (may the fourth be with you!) surrounded by a thick cloud of fog on all sides. We drove through the foggy whiteout down a road of hairpin bends and twisted, windy stretches until we reached Kyle of Lochalsh. Popping into a café that advertised hot breakfast and Wifi, we could assess our plans for the Isle of Skye.
The foggy drive in the morning
Looking over to Skye
The sun was shining so we set off across
the bridge to the Isle, passing many photographers making use of the golden
sunlight that hit the water. The
Hebrides in the distance were hazy and blue, but the mountains of Skye were
vibrant and a little foreboding. Our
first stop had been the Fairy Pools and the Cuillins, but it seemed every Scot
and his dog had decided to take adventage of the sunshine and head to the
magical waterfalls. We decided to head
here another day.
We drove north through Portree, stopping to
take photographs of the magnificent mountains, cast in different shadows every
time they came into view because the clouds moved so quickly. We head up to Storr to pay a visit to the Old
Man. Legend has it that the spindly
stacks standing beside the Storr are a man and wife, turned to stone for not
heeding the advice of a terrible giant.
The wife has fallen in the years since, but the Old Man stands strong.
Fog settling under the blue sky
Approaching the Old Man
The weather permitted deviating from the
path, and we walked up smaller mountains to points that offered spectacular
views of the strange formations. The
moving clouds meant that picture opportunities were few, for the structures were
often cast in shadow, but we stayed around, watching them change in the
light. A young pair of Belgian girls
joined us on our lookout and we took a few pictures of them. On the way down we saw many dogs, happily sploshing
around in the soft mud while their humans followed behind, sharing embarrassed
grins with passersby.
The Old Man of Storr
Almost the exact same picture with Nicholas in it
From Storr, we made a stop by Kilt Rock and
a small waterfall called Mealt Falls.
“It ain’t no Niagra Falls,” a middle-aged
American woman said to her partner.
Kilt Rock was aptly named, and looked like
a series of pillars all melded together.
Nicholas became more interested in the sounds being produced from the
wind on the bars of the fence, and began recording them on his phone. I started
chatting to another – slightly dimwitted – American tourist, who was struggling
to comprehend that we could see mainland Scotland over the ocean. He had come over to Scotland for a while, and
was spending one day on Skye. I couldn’t
comprehend that you could only spend one day on Skye.
A Scottish dinosaur
Mealt Falls
“We’re heading to Ben Nevis and that area
tomorrow, have you been there yet?” he asked.
I said no, but that we were heading there
next week.
“Do you know if there’s anything to do
there? We read that we should go there
but didn’t read why!” He laughed at this, but I thought it made him sound
sillier.
I told him about how we were going to hike
up Ben Nevis and about Glen Coe, and about how Glen Coe is where Skyfall was
filmed and Harry Potter too, and how you can do some beautiful walks around
there.
“Yeah,” he said, “we might want to do a
walk around there or hike up Ben Nevis.
Maybe do an hour or two walking or something, but I don’t know.”
“There are probably some beautiful
ground-level walks at Glen Coe,” I suggested.
I didn’t bother telling him that the tourist track up to Ben Nevis was
around 9 hours or so.
Nicholas had adequate recordings of the
ethereal vibrations on the poles, so we decided to make the most of the fading
light and see the Quiraing before sundown.
On the way, we stopped by a little village called Staffin to use the loo
and buy a few grocery bits, and found that they had shelves of second-hand
books for a donation. Good ones, too,
not just piles of trashy Mills & Boon novellas and books written by
Danielle Steel. We bought a few, left
some coins and hurried on to the Quiraing.
This man was caught herding his sheep on the main road
This sheep was desperately bleating at us as we drove past, so we stopped to say hello
Nicholas scouting out a camp spot
A romantic cruise boat heading into the sunset
It was almost 7 and the sun was still high
in the sky, but we decided against walking the Quairaing, which faces east and
would soon be cast in shadow. We
wandered around and found a perfect camp spot, decided to come back to it in an
hour after having a look around Uig, found that it started raining, so parked
our car by the Quiraing and slept there.
You’ll soon see a trend emerging.
Sunrise at the Quiraing
We woke the next morning, and the mist was
sitting low on the Quiraing. We had
attempted to wake for sunset to get a good view of the structure – as had other
photographers who filled the carpark early in the morning and probably saw us
sleeping – but the whole thing was shrouded in the fog. We decided to get up and do a little circuit
around the Quiraing despite the buffeting winds and impending rain. After passing the Quiraing, you jump a fence
and enter this beautiful, magical looking dell.
Nick Williams, who has written all the books of walks we’ve purchased,
notes that this is the perfect place to find little nooks and hiding
places. Instead of playing hide and
seek, we found a big boulder wrapped in pink string.
We should definitely be sponsored by Vauxhall
The road leading up to the Quiraing
Heading to The Prison
“Modern art,” Nick muttered, moving to unravel it. He had to wait though, because two gentlemen came walking in the other direction.
“Did you do that?” one of them asked.
We shook our heads.
“Art in the landscape,” the other said, and
we weren’t sure whether they approved or not.
Once they were out of sight, Nicholas pulled of the string and on we
went.
The boulder wrapped in string
We arrived back at the car just as the rain
started coming down in buckets. Sitting
in the car, we continued listening to Harry Potter until lunchtime rolled
around, when we decided to find somewhere to eat. We drove around, trying to find a café but found
an Iron Age souterrain instead. We
mustered up all our courage to jump out of the car and have a look, but it was
really flooded, so we breathed a sigh of relief, told each other (and
ourselves) that we had tried to be cultured, but turned on the heated seats and
listened to Stephen Fry tell us about wizards.
The Souterrain
Sounds promising
We decided to head to a café we’d seen
advertised near the grocery store and community centre, where we bought the
books. I won’t tell you about that, because it was an incredibly disappointing
and overpriced lunch.
The rain let up for a while, so we decided
to visit the coral beaches. Naturally,
by the time we arrived, it was raining again and it was a mile long walk to the
coral part, but we layered on our wet weather gear and started trudging along
the beach.
Nicholas was quickly soaked through his
goretex, his boots and his waterproof pants, but I managed to stay relatively
dry. The beach looked to be covered in
pure white sand at first glance, but it was a thin coating of tiny bits of white
coral that covered the beach. This was
nice and all, but wasn’t the best part about the coral beach. Shortly after we’d clamored down a small
man-made dune, we started seeing the tell-tale black, shiny beach balls bobbing
out of the water. Seals!
I waved to them and got their curious seal
attention, and they followed us like eager puppies along the beach. A family of German tourists was taking
pictures of themselves pretending to run along the beach while evidently
wishing they were in their warm car. I
wandered over to them and asked if they wanted a picture of all three of them
and they declined. I asked if they’d
seen the seals and they hadn’t (somehow, there were about 20 of them), so I
pointed to a spot about 200m from shore, where six seals had recently surfaced.
Monster?!
The Coral Beach
With anticipation, none of them reared their heads for a moment, then one sprung up – not where my finger was pointed – but about 3m in front of us. They gasped, and we ventured on, our faithful seal friends following us.
Eventually back at the car, we allowed our
things to dry off and our cold skin to thaw with some more Harry Potter. We then decided to drive out to Neist Point,
to a lighthouse on the coast. Ignoring
all “no overnight parking” signs, we slept there, watching the fog creep over
the ocean as the sun went down and listening to the cold, wet bleats of tiny
lambs.
The view from the car at Neist Point
The following morning we did the walk to
the lighthouse, navigating past hundreds of ewes and their lambs. The lighthouse was incredibly dilapidated and
rather sad looking, with mustard paneling and broken windows. At one point, the lighthouse keepers’
quarters had been rented out as a B&B, but those windows were all smashed
and it all looked a bit haunted. We
didn’t linger.
We drove back past Dunvegan, where I had
wanted to do a boat trip around the castle looking for seals. We gave it a miss because we’d seen the seals
yesterday and doubted any would be basking in such dreadful weather. We considered going in to see the Fairy Flag,
which we’d learnt about in my Folk Tales book, but it was super overpriced, so
we admired from a distance and kept driving.
Neist Point
The Lighthouse
Dunvegan Castle
After our disappointing lunch the day
before, we decided to visit a café we’d seen advertised on a brochure. “VEGETARIAN FOOD – WIFI” were how they advertised
themselves, so we figured they’d be topnotch.
We had macaroni cheese topped with veggie haggis, which felt very
Scottish. Their wifi was pretty good
too, so we could check up on all our affairs and emails, which was relaxing and
warm and allowed us some time to get out of the weather.
We drove around for a while and enjoyed the
mist and the wet weather. Even when the
weather in Scotland is rubbish, it’s still beautiful. It really lends itself to the weather, so
driving around the misty mountains and hills was stunning. It did mean that we couldn’t do all the walks
we’d wanted to, but the heated seats had a certain appeal in the cold and we
were getting to the good bits in our book.
We popped by a well-advertised ‘beach’ in
Staffin, which was quite rocky and had violent, crashing waves beating down
beside the car. They use the term beach
quite loosely here. The cliffs beside us
were quite beautiful, and Nicholas thought they looked like giant engraved
inscriptions in the rock face.
Staffin Beach
Staffin Beach
The 'inscribed' rocks
Deciding not to do the 5 hour walk we had
planned by the Fairy Glen, we drove up there and had a meander when the rain
subsided. Tiny lambs were jumping around
and there were man-made stone Fairy Rings filled with found objects and bones
and money. Nicholas got very excited
when he saw it and proclaimed, “Free money!” but I wouldn’t let him take
it. After much convincing, I told him he
could take 1 Mexican coin and 1 Russian coin if he gave two better objects, so
he gave them a comb, some peat, a fishhook and some other small bits and
pieces. Much more useful than foreign
dollars.
Approaching the Fairy Glen
Nicholas claims that this isn't adequate hiking attire
As we were leaving the glen, the sun reappeared, so it was cast in this beautiful orange light
That night we drove to a little lookout on
the road that overlook an old lighthouse.
The night quickly got foggy but the bright light from the lighthouse
kept flashing toward us through the gloom.
The Lighhouse
We also saw this small island in the middle of a loch, solely populated by sheep
The following morning was our last on Skye, and
we were nearing the end of our audiobook.
Hoping in vain to beat the crowds to the Fairy Pools, which are a series
of waterfalls with beautiful blue-green pools at the base. The pools were really beautiful and we
wandered around, Nicholas hopping around on rocks to get better pictures than
all the other photographers with their clunky tripods.
The Cuillins in the distance
The Fairy Pools (that's me in my pyjamas in the top right-hand corner)
I love the sky reflected in the puddles in this picture, taken by Nicholas
We considered going for a dip, but the growing
number of tourists put us off. The fact
that it was glacial run off also made us reconsider.
From here, we stopped off at Hector’s
Bothy, the café we had breakfast at before we arrived on Skye, and drove to
Faisnacloich, where our next AirBnB was. We had to drive via Fort William so Nicholas could get another Goretex
because his had started leaking so quickly.
So that’s where we are now – in Faisnacloich. We technically shouldn’t even be here
now. It wasn’t in our plan to still be
here, but we are. I guess I’ll get to
that in the next post.
Driving past Eilean Donan Castle on the way to Faisnacloich
All I know about Eilean Donan Castle is what's in this book.
About the Author
0 comments