DUNVEGAN’S TWO CHURCHES WALK

OCTOBER 18, 2024

                ONCE AGAIN HEADING DOWN OUR DRIVEWAY FOR THE FIFTEEN MINUTE DRIVE TO DUNVEGAN

This week I would like to take you on a short stroll Fran and I took in Dunvegan. The Two Churches Walk was a rarity on Skye as it lived up to its reputation as a pleasant stroll near town. While it was not as short as advertised, it was a pleasant surprise on an island that could charitably be described as not exactly “user friendly.” While we certainly needed our hiking poles, there were none of the unpleasant terrain difficulties we encountered on almost every other hike on Skye.

                THE REMAINS OF ST. MARY'S CHURCH, RUINED AROUND 1730

The walk was advertised as taking about an hour, which as usual included no time at all for actually taking in the beautiful scenery available on the hike. It sometimes seemed to me that the trail times were set by walkers who were suffering through their exercise rather than enjoying their day. Since we actually wanted to have a good time, the walk took closer to couple of hours as we enjoyed the wild variances of environments that we encountered in less than two miles of exploring.

                                                                  SOME GRAVES ARE MORE MONUMENTAL THAN OTHERS

The walk started at a lay-by very close to the town center, just opposite the Airb&b that Fran and I had anticipated spending a week in March of 2020. The property was still there but the business had not survived the pandemic. We set out on a path that took us up a hill to the ruins of St. Mary’s Church, which were composed of two gable ends and a graveyard and one old tree that looked like it too had been there for centuries. The church dates from before the Protestant Reformation. The graveyard contained many gravestones dating back to the 1730’s, including several chieftains of the Clan MacLeod which ruled from nearby Dunvegan Castle.

                THE OPEN MOOR

We then started uphill and encountered the first really open moor we had seen in a while. This moorland was as close to wilderness as you can find in the United Kingdom, even though you are within sight of the local roads. The fact is that these moors are so inhospitable, even to sheep, that they remain pretty wild even though they are close at hand, and are the results of the ancient human desire to cut down any woodland that man encounters. This results in a "moor", which can be accurately described as a man-made wilderness, a medieval product of “paving paradise and putting up a parking lot” - in this case trading in a forest for scrubland that nobody seems to know what to do with, centuries later.

                MORE BLUEBELLS, OH MY!

Just when I thought we were doomed to one environment, we went through another gate and started hiking through a reasonable facsimile of the ancient forest that preceded the moor. At first it seemed to be a typical Scottish woodland, complete with appropriately gnarly oaks and birches surrounded by bluebells. But after a few more twists and turns, and considerable loss of light, Fran and I found ourselves transported several thousand miles back to the Columbia Gorge.

                                                                   IS THIS OREGON, OR SCOTLAND?

The woods were so much like Oregon that I could reasonably get away with labeling these images as originating just an hour from home rather than a continent away. It turned out that this section of forest was one of the best approximations of the original Scottish woodland that was lost many years ago, and is usually only found deep within a planted tree farm in the Highlands of Scotland.

                                                                  A FAMILIAR ENVIRONMENT

                GREEN AS BACK HOME, COMPLETE WITH NURSE TREES!

                                                                  THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME

The environment was so complete - the ferns, the fir trees, the moss, and the ever-present moisture - that Fran and I felt very much at home. Yet only a few minutes later we were walking through the parking lot of the “new” Duirinish Church of Scotland, the second of the “two churches” and were back in Dunvegan, looking for scones.