It was a drive of 421 miles to the Skye Bridge and we nearly didn’t make it, we were 9 miles short when our 14 year old diesel engine started tapping. Thankfully we had a breakdown/recovery service and amazingly, a tow truck turned up within 30 minutes. Our superhero mechanic used his size 8mm spanner to re-secure our fuel injectors, and to our immense relief, we were off.
Camping by the beach at Glenbrittle, in the shadow of the Cuillins, was fabulous. The following day Ian walked up to Coire Lagan and then came back down for his first dip in the sea (too cold for a full immersion). I walked along the beach and picked up two bags of rubbish (mainly bits of fishing nets) and, in the early hours of the morning, got to see a magnificent display of the northern lights.
The following day we moved to a park up on Carbost pier and walked to the nearby Talisker Whiskey Distillery. Yes, we did! Of course we did! The full tour and tasting experience. And, as we feel very strongly that you should always support local industry and businesses, we did purchase a couple of bottles that were within our (stretched) budget rather than the ones that weren’t! (We will quietly ignore the fact that they are now part of one of the world’s largest drinks companies!)
The next few days were spent appreciating and exploring the Trotternish landslip, the longest example of thermally altered basalt in the UK. The towering Old Man of Storr, is an edifice that gives the whole island a thumbs up! Dramatic and majestic, it featured in the 2012 sci-fi film Prometheus. Ian made it to the top to take this fabulous pic.
That night we parked on a muddy track with a view across the Sound of Raasay. And, with a red aurora alert, I was desperate for a clear, dark sky. It was a long wait but finally at 10:42pm there was a glimmer of red on the camera. I was out of that van faster than a meteorite could say “shooting star” and started taking pics when I got rudely interrupted by a distraught family who’d driven their hired motorhome too far off the track and got stuck in the mud “Can we borrow your grip mats?”. By the time I’d sorted them out, the light show was over, and the clouds were back.
Up early again and Ian got another impressive walk in along the Quiraing. This immense flood basalt landscape was labelled “a nightmare of nature” by the Scottish poet Alexander Smith. The scale is incredible with a central raised plateau known as the Table and the Needle, a jagged pinnacle rising to 120 feet (37 m) above the surrounding landscape. The park up that day was by An Corran, the beach at Staffin where dinosaur footprints can be found in the rocks.
Our final treat was the tourist trap of the Fairy Pools at the foot of the Cuillins. These waters are a vivid aqua blue and popular for wild swimming. Ian did make it to the top pool, but the queues for a dip in the frigid waters put him off. I also admit to just finding amusement in watching people posing for photographs under the direction of their over enthusiastic partners. You don’t need to understand someone’s language to appreciate their meaning!
We even managed to fit in a first, in-person visit with one of Heather’s friends. They met online, taking part in an online choir during lock-down, but this was the first time they met face-to-face, and it was a little emotional. We loved the visit and were very envious of the view from their house. But Ian says we couldn’t live there because there’s nowhere to moor a narrowboat.
It’s been strange that on every day that we’ve been travelling any distance, we’ve seen rainbows. They are usually quite small and low, stretching across the foot of a hillside or along a glen. We even saw them as we sailed to Harris on the ferry from Uig to Tarbert. Perhaps they are a sign of hope because we left Skye as we had entered it, with engine problems. This time the van was billowing out white smoke and kangarooing on and off the ferry. Driving around to the nearest garage, we discovered it had closed about 4 years ago! But somehow, the engine now decided to behave itself, so we drove on to a nearby spot to recover from all the excitement.
