Exploring Skye

Scotland, or Alba, as increasingly few of its inhabitants call it, is a fascinating country, for political and cultural reasons and, most importantly, because it sports a beautiful, unique, and largely rather sparsely populated countryside. It is also a place I have wanted to visit for some years—I would have gone last year, if I hadn't ended up in the USA. This year, however, I went there. And loved it.

The organization that got me to the Highlands is called Fahrten-Ferne-Abenteuer (FFA), which roughly translates to journeys-distance-adventures, but sounds a lot more elegant. They're in the business of providing teenagers with exciting camps and adventurous trips to other countries, all in the manner of the scouting movement. I wasn't one of these teenagers, I was one of the people leading and coaching them.

After spending a number of days in London, Edinburgh, and our coach, getting to know each other and the equipment (for the most part, that means “tents”), the three groups we had created selected their routes for the hike everyone had been waiting for. Each group was to start off at a different place on the Isle of Skye Friday afternoon, and meet up in Portree Tuesday morning. My group, seven young lads, between 16 and 18 years old, chose the longest and certainly most scenic route, a beautiful trip that many of the younger participants would probably have had great difficulty with.

Our starting point was Broadford, in the southern part of Skye, and we had no intention of taking a direct route, especially since that would have meant walking along boring, busy A-roads. Instead, we headed south-westward, along the B8083. Since Broadford is relatively close to Skye Bridge, we arrived well in the afternoon on Friday, must have been about 4 o'clock, meaning we still had plenty of time left to start off. We walked for a couple of hours in (comparatively) splendid weather before we started looking for and finding a spot to pitch our tent, which isn't an easy task in the swamp-like conditions with which we were faced. Those couple of hours, much of which we spent on a footpath of marvellous, presented us with fabulous views (like the one pictured above), and we knew that it would almost certainly get even better.

We knew that, rightly, because we were looking forward to our first target, our brilliant excuse for going South. That target was a valley, (relatively) far from civilization, with no road traversing, a number of Lochs distributed within, and quite large mountains on either side. The valley I mean runs from a place called Camasunary (marked on the map), probably once (or still?) a farm, in the South to Sligachan, a village consisting essentially of a hotel and campsite in the North.

Saturday, far from the valley we sought, we woke up to terribly wet, cold, Scottish rain. Rain that didn't cease until well into the evening, which didn't make it any warmer either. Of course, we had heard rumours about Scottish rain, and were equipped accordingly. In the morning, we decided to get up, pack our things and leave without any breakfast in the hope of finding somewhere a bit more comfortable or, possibly, sunshine. Finding a nice place to eat was considerably easier than you might think: the first Scotsman we asked, in the village of Torrin, was good enough to let us use his old caravan, something of an ersatz shed for old chairs, and the toilet within—a luxury we gladly accepted for a lengthy brunch.

That same man did us an even larger favour while we were leaving. After asking where we were going, he told us of a cottage at the beginning of “our” valley that was open for anyone to stay in. That cottage, marked on the map above (zoom in!) became our target for the day. I believe the idea of a dry shelter empowered all of us to some extent. We would have been able to cover a considerably larger distance that day, but the cottage was far enough that we could allow ourselves to stay there.

First, though, we had to get there. We followed the B8083 around the bay of Loch Slapin until Kilmarie, the start of a path over the hills, across, into the valley, where we stayed.

Sunday was good. Really good.

The rain had subsided. The wind stayed with us all the way, but the rain was passé. I'm not saying it didn't rain—Skye hadn't seen a rain-free day for over 50 days, and that wasn't to be the first, but the weather was very pleasant.

Nonetheless, the valley was a rather wet place. That amount of rain means a lot of water, which means a lot of small, and not so small, streams running down mountains, and into valleys. There was nothing remotely like a bridge anywhere between Kilmarie and Sligachan, which meant we ended up striding through knee-deep water on a number of occasions that day—adventures we thoroughly enjoyed. Having arrived in Sligachan sometime in the afternoon, we stopped for the campsite toilets and some biscuits before continuing our journey, this time along the East coast of Skye. We pitched our tent in the hills above Peinchorran, at a nice, but windy spot, a spot that must have been the best decision of the two weeks. A spot marked on the map below.

Monday morning, we were greeted by very little wind, and possibly the most splendid sunrise I have ever seen. The sun kept shining (virtually) all day, making the trip up, along the coast, to Portree a very agreeable one. Once there, we met up with one of the other groups, camped well-hidden in the centre of the town, many of us feeling rather worn-out after over 60km of Skye. Tuesday morning brought us rain, but Tuesday morning was also the day we made our way down to Auchengillan, near Glasgow.

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