STEIN AND THE WATERNISH PENINSULA

OCTOBER 4, 2024

                                               BURIED AT THE END OF THE WORLD

One of the best parts of our stay on the Isle of Skye was that we were there for so long that we could wander around without worrying about missing the “most important” sites on the island. One day we sent Vinny and Steve off to Elgol to take the boat trip we had already taken. As an example of how “the madness” had begun, the same boat on which we had been the only passengers now contained Vinny and Steve and almost twenty other passengers. We set off to explore the rest of the Waternish Peninsula, North of Dunvegan Castle.

                                                                  MULTIPLY THIS TOWNHOUSE BY ABOUT TWELVE AND YOU HAVE THE VILLAGE OF STEIN

Another wonderful aspect of Skye was that no matter how isolated a spot we visited, there was always another place that seemed even further removed from civilization. As we traveled North of Dunvegan on the usual single-track road, we encountered one of the weirdest “villages” I have ever seen, the hamlet of Stein.

                STEIN IS NOW THREE BUILDINGS BECAUSE ONE OF THE TOWNHOUSES BURNED DOWN A LONG TIME AGO, LEAVING A GAP. THE STEIN INN HELPFULLY "SIGNS" ITS NAME ON THE NOW EXPOSED PARTY WALL AT THE GAP

Stein dates from 1790, when Thomas Telford, a noted British architect, was tasked with creating a new fishing village to encourage economic development in an isolated part of Skye North of Dunvegan Castle. The only trouble was that the croft farmers of the area had no desire to become fisherman in the dangerous waters surrounding Skye. Within a generation the corporation finally gave up its plans and the little village became a pretty weird hamlet of croft houses for the still struggling farmers.

                WHAT MUST BE THE MOST ANTI-SOCIAL DWELLINGS IN THE WORLD - THE ONLY SINGLE DWELLING IN STEIN, A FEW HUNDRED FEET AWAY FROM THE ROW HOUSES.

Stein is composed of about a dozen houses, all contained in only three different buildings. It is as if a row of urban townhouses from Brooklyn had been transported thousands of miles intact to the wilds of Skye. The only reason that there are three buildings is that at some point one of the townhouses was destroyed in a fire, leaving a gap in the row. We drove up to a village that had one street and a white-washed set of row houses, pretty much identical two-story dwellings, white with black trim. They all shared the same view of Loch Bay across their individual gardens and one public lawn.

                THE SHORE OF LOCH BAY

Most of the village now seemed to really be a set of holiday cottages. The Stein Inn occupied a few of the townhouses. It is reputed to be the oldest pub on Skye, dating from the original demise of the fishing village plans. It seemed to be a very attractive pub, but I waited third in line at the bar for more than fifteen minutes with no apparent staff when Fran sent me in for a drink. We later realized that the barmaid was the only woman we ever saw on Skye who was actually sunbathing in the park the whole time we were there. This speaks to the problem of finding employees that are not actually part of your family in a place like Skye. By the time we left the boss was literally begging her to go serve the punters in the Inn.

                THE VIEW ACROSS LOCH BAY

The only other place to eat in town was the Loch Bay Restaurant, a Michelin-starred place where the prix fixed dinner ran to 175 pounds per person. Fran and I eventually settled on two cokes and a bag of crisps in the park. We found the apartment we almost picked to stay on Skye above a gallery in the line of townhouses, and realized that Stein  was a nice place to visit, but probably a pretty weird place to actually live, even for a week.

                THE VIEW AT THE END OF THE ROAD

The only comparable living situation I could compare Stein to were the ancient Hopi apartment blocks in the midst of the Navaho Reservation, where most of the entire Hopi nation live in three single blocks of attached dwellings in the middle of nowhere. We left Stein and drove further up the Waternish Peninsula for another few minutes to the literal end of the road.

                                      A GREAT PLACE TO BE A SHEEP, BUT YOU BETTER LIKE YOUR FAMILY.

The views were absolutely beautiful in this incredibly lonely place. At first we looked across Loch Bay, which solved the Skye problem of whether to call a body of water a Loch or a Bay by just combining the two. Across the Loch sat another part of the Isle of Skye, whose various peninsulas form a sort of lobster when viewing the entire island on a map. As we turned the final corner of the road, we were now starring across “The Minch”, the body of water between Skye and the Outer Hebrides two to three hours away by ferry. After that it was clear sailing all the way to North America.

                                                                  TWO VIEWS FROM THE LONELY GRAVEYARD AT THE END OF THE ROAD

We ended our trip at yet another very picturesque graveyard, whose denizens had stared out to sea for over two hundred years. Everyone obviously had strong ties to somewhere nearby, although there were many people who had lived in Glasgow, London and even further before coming back to be buried in this tiny portion of the end of the world.