I made it to Skye

The Caladonian MacBrayne ferry runs the main services between the mainland and the surrounding islands. For the Small Isles – Eigg, Muck, Rum and Canna – this isn’t necessarily daily, and even if it passes the island you want to set your feet on you might have to wait for it to do the rounds before it makes your stop. In some ways, I imagine that this would mean a little more planning if you lived on the island (I understand there are only eleven inhabitants on one at the moment, and just three on another) because if you missed your ferry that would be it. But in another way it would also give a more relaxed pace for your life. You don’t have eighteen buses for fifteen destinations to do any selection of varied activities to choose from. You’re constrained, and perhaps there’s a freedom in that. This, of course, comes from someone who’s never lived on an island with just one ferry almost daily, and hasn’t actually spoken to anyone about it.

I did catch a ferry for part of its Friday round to two of the Small Isles, Muck and Eigg, just for a cruise to get a closer look at those shapes visible on Mallaig’s horizon, though that hardly makes me an expert. The weather was giving the same mix of rain and sun from the previous day, and the entire journey we passed through shadows and skiffs and sure them in turn chase over the land forms, islands and mainland alike.

‘Eigg’ comes from an old Norse word meaning ‘notch.’ It’s quite apparent how it got this name on looking at it, as the cliffs on the island align in such a way as to produce quite the notch in the island’s silhouette. It was quite impressive to see the notch separate, the thrusting peak of it turn into a long cliff to match that on the other side. We sailed on by the first time of passing, going to Muck where a farm vehicle was loaded on and a couple of people (possibly exactly a couple, but at least one) boarded. Muck was green and comparatively flat to Eigg. Its name apparently means ‘pig.’ Why exactly it’s an island of pigs I’m not sure, and haven’t yet found out. There was much more foot traffic off and on at Eigg, where we stopped long enough for me to watch twin lambs attempted to scale a steep side with their mother’s encouragement. As a side note, it seems that all lambs come in pairs over here.

Some kind of sea flowers
on the beach at Broadford

From Eglol pier

We came back to Mallaig, and I exchanged the Congratulations-You-Won letter for my free ticket to Skye, and managed to find a home for the spare with not a hot fisherman as proposed to me by one of the woman, but a somewhat flustered looking chap in the terminal who’d just come from Eigg with an ungainly backpack. On the ferry I took advantage of the discount coupon that came with the ticket, having two biscuits and two hot chocolates to myself. The ride to Armadale was short. Skye is very close - after all, there is a bridge to it on the other end.

Now, I know that some of you are waiting for a description of a marvellous pier on the Isle of Skye, enhanced with the meaningfulness of stepping out onto the island of my ancestors. It was just a pier, with black rock and seaweed, and a bus that had been instructed by the lady who sold me the biscuits to wait. It became more than ‘just’ as we drove on. I saw low rocks jutting out into the sea, sea that cut into the land. I saw big hills I don’t know the names of, green farmland, some forboding moors, and more big hills. There were round hills and pointy hills, hills that seemed to be leaning in on themselves, and even, dare I say, some little hills.

Broadford is small, and somewhere between dull and charming that I can't quite pinpoint, and makes me think of Jethro Tull’s ‘Broadford Bazaar’ and want to learn swear words in Gaelic. It's right on the waterfront, with the ocean enclosed by hills all around, and a couple of small islets over which smears of rainbows like to lurk. Behind it are the peaks of the eastern Cuillins. The beach is pebbles and sand and slabs of broken rock that form a broken grey pavement. There’s a short walkway out to a pier that passes an old cairn that was once accidentally broken to reveal a burial mound, and which now has trees growing over it. In the pine trees behind the backpackers I stayed at, which I simply can’t bring myself to recommend, I found a treehouse with a printed notice pinned beneath it, declaring that someone had built it because it made their heart happy. It also had a more formal notice hammered underneath it, warning not to go up because of the possibility of death (I assume from the possibility of falling).

I had intended to spend to following day biking out to Suisnish, largely because it seemed a ride I could do comfortably within the time and would allow me to see some more of the island. However, I had forgotten to email the bike hire place, and the fellow wasn’t there. Instead I caught a lift with a local woman, who was going to Egol. She’s been a resident of Skye for a couple of years now. She originally came from Sweden and bought a one way ticket to the UK, took any bus, and ended up on Skye. She didn’t leave.

She recommended to me taking a boat out to Loch Coruisk. It can also be reached from land, either on a long walk from Sligachan or a shorter one across the steep and terrifying-looking ‘Bad Step’ from Egol itself. On a boat, you don’t have to walk as far or risk dying quite so much, and you also get to pass by some seals. “I can recommend the white shed,” she said, for there are two companies that offer rides, and the white shed is run by locals. I arrived just in time for the white shed Misty Isles Boat Trips departure. There were just three of us (and the very affable and quite handsome young man piloting the boat). One passenger was, though I try not to seem cruel saying it, somewhat of a caricature – the accent of Moss from ‘The IT Crowd,’ the aged appearance of one of my old University tutors, likely well-travelled and a consumer of travel plans (I expect he knew his train timetables), rather talkative, and a fan of the phrase ‘it’s quite pleasant.’ He was also, let me reassure you, quite friendly.

The drive to Egol was very scenic, taking me past the Red Hills, past the jagged and magnetic Cuillins, and a variety of other hills between. The other surrounding peaks that look over the bay in Egol have names like Bla Bheinn, and only go up. The little boat took us out towards them and into a bay, where seals (of the common variety) lounged and flopped about on the rocks. Their hides are speckled and smooth, not like our fur seals.

Loch Coruisk is out of sight on first landing, but walking around the mouth of a river that emerges here it becomes quickly apparent. It is surrounded by the black Cuillins. At the end of the loch they were covered in snow. Our Edinburgh friend Walter Scott said of the loch,

Rarely human eye has knownA scene so stern as that dread lake,With its dark ledge of barren stone.

I walked as far as I could in half an hours, stopping to gawk at the blacks and greys and heavy blues. I climbed over the sloping rocks. I looked for red deer and sea eagles and saw none, but it didn’t matter. I saw Coruisk. Then I turned back to catch the ship, for we only had an hour allotted. It seems it was timed well, as the clouds began to move in as we left.

The other passenger on the boat was an older man who I rather liked. His brother had once been a sea merchant, but was ejected from his homeland for some misdemeanour or other and had resolved the situation by marrying a Maori woman in New Zealand, and so he has family who live in the Bay of Plenty. He had been travelling there, and said that it had been one of the few places he’d visited that had tempted him at all to move. He also turned out to be a writer, mainly of short stories, and so we conversed a little on the matter. He was able to give me a lift back to Broadford. It was by far the best company I’ve met so far.

 Things like that day to Egol are what I had hoped – chance, fate, aventure.