Friday, still in love

A very windy night on the far coast last night. We’d swapped sleeping orientation too which meant I was on the side next to the window and I don’t sleep as well that way. Have swapped back round again tonight. I didn’t hear the mouse but all the chocolate was eaten off the traps again so it was clearly about – the sound of the wind must have drowned it out!

This morning after Popmaster we headed off to properly explore Trotternish, the top right of Skye (or top left, depending on how you look at it I guess). We’d gotten half way round last night before stopping, so did the second half with intentions of having a decent walk and seeing some proper scenery. We stopped at a museum of fossils but it was £2 each entrance and Ady said it looked like there was very little there to see, so we didn’t bother. We stopped at the Staffin / Kilt rock viewpoint hoping for a walk but it simply was a viewpoint. A very gorgeous viewpoint mind you, with information boards, dinosaur footprints to compare to your own and railings blocking a very impressive sheer drop down the cliff. The pillars of rock were impressive too.

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From there we drove to Storr and pulled over for lunch before getting togged up to do the walk. It was far harder going than I’d expected being very steep and I was lagging behind the others quite quickly. At the halfway point I decided I was no longer enjoying the climb and would sit and enjoy the view. I was feeling quite smug and self congratulatory on this and was sitting soaking up the amazing views and deciding that it was a metaphor for life in many ways – some people need to climb to the top of every mountain, others can be happy to get halfway, realise the journey is more important than the destination and be happy to stop and just enjoy how far they have come. An epiphany on a mountainside ;). I watched a woman climb closer and closer to me taking photos and seeming oblivious to me. When she caught sight of me (her eyesight was poor, she geninuely had not seen me although she reckoned I’d be in all her pictures!) we had a 15 minute chat and I shared my deep ponderance with her. She was equally entranced by it (she had not enjoyed the climb much either and had decided halfway was perfect for taking photos looking up and down!) and we shared potted stories of what brought us there. She was kiwi, travelling round the UK and heading for home to sell up and buy somewhere with a view and settle for a simpler life. Clearly I had a similar tale to tell. We agreed that we had it all sussed, wished that all our dreams came true for each other and parted. 🙂 A very happy encounter, wish I had her picture on my camera too really. Did feel slightly like that scene in Lost where Jack meets that Irish guy running and he runs off with ‘see you in a different life’…but I’m not anticipating any air travel any time soon so I guess I’m safe.

Ady, Davies and Scarlett did make it all the way to the top and Ady said the going had actually been much easier the second half of the way. They rang me from the top but couldn’t see me as they were shrouded in mist. The weather kept changing with clouds blowing across and the view was like this one moment
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and literally seconds later like this
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All very mystical and atmospheric and lovely though. You could *feel* the history and imagine all the thousands of people who have climbed and walked there and almost hear the echo of their footsteps.

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I meanwhile was gazing out over the ocean at this
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The others came down and we all retreated all the way back down to the carpark before deciding what to do next. We thought we’d do the other upper jutting out bit so via Portree for petrol we headed towards Waternish. And very lovely it is too. It felt more rugged that Trotternish somehow although that could have been the darkening sky and the lateness of the day ;). We pulled up at SkyeSkyns only half an hour before they were about to close but got happily ushered in for the free guided tour of the tanning process and shown round all the old fashioned machinery used for the process of making sheepskins. Fascinating stuff 🙂 Upstairs in the show room we were all very tempted by the gorgeous rugs and hope to one day have one in our new house on Skye ;). It was particularly interesting having seen sheep and cow skins being salted at the slaughterhouse in Devon all those months ago ready to be shipped off for this process as all the skins used here were from animals killed for meat.

By then it was 6pm and steadily getting dark. We’d been looking for an overnight stop and found nowhere at all suitable – either too close to the single track road or on too sloping an incline, so we made the decision to head back to Sligachan where we knew we could come to the campsite again. It was the right choice, despite arriving in the dark and having a really late dinner as it is even blustery here and the van is moving despite being in a dip and fairly sheltered.

We’re now debating our next move as we want to do the Sleat peninsula and that is where the ferry across to Mallaig leaves from so we will probably head off of Skye on Sunday and get a campsite back on the mainland on Monday and have our final two weeks in that area. Lynda and Stuart are planning to head up for a few days next weekend so we’ll meet up with them then too.