TALISKER BAY

October 11, 2024  •  Leave a Comment

TALISKER BAY

OCTOBER 11, 2024

 

                                                                  THE ONLY CLUE THAT WE'RE NOT IN OREGON IS THE ANCIENT STONE WALL LEADING TO THE SEA STACK.

This week I would like to recount a day trip Fran and I took to Talisker Bay, a beautiful and fairly remote beach on the Western side of Skye. This is one of those places that is pretty out of the way and thus frequented more by the locals than even intrepid visitors. In fact at least one nice woman begged me not to tell anyone about the place, and she was only half-kidding. I think it’s safe since the lonely road from Dunvegan takes any least a half-hour before you get to the single-track sections. Since most tourists stay closer to Portree this trip really becomes a whole-day excursion.

 

                                                                  WE WOKE UP TO THIS VIEW BEHIND OUR CABIN DUNVEGAN. THE SHEEP HAD NOT ARRIVED AS OF YET.

                THE ROAD WEST

The road west from Dunvegan takes you through a series of hills, lochs and mountains on the way to the tiny village of Carbost, which is dominated by the Talisker Distillery. We stopped by to get our bearings and find the single-track road out of the village to the Bay.

 

                                      THE VIEW ON THE WAY TO CARBOST

Before we left we stopped at the Oyster Shed, a renowned place to get fresh fish on Skye. An obscure single-track road wound uphill, with no real indication of where in the hell you were going or even if the store was up there at the end of the road. We finally came upon what had to be the worst car park on all of Skye. I still do not know how Fran safely parked the car. The restaurant was outstanding, as long as you realized that you would be eating outside with dozens of your closest friends at one picnic table with a view down to the sea. We both ate more than our fill, especially after I realized that a dozen fresh-shucked oysters cost the same as half a dozen!

 

                                      A VIEW OF ONE OF THE FOLDS IN THE MOUNTAINS SOUTH OF THE PATH TO THE BEACH

The traffic dropped drastically on the four mile single-track road to the beach hike at Talisker Bay. The hike was very gentle for Skye, although I soon realized that the advertised one-mile long route did not include the one-mile walk from the car park to the start of the hike.

 

                                                                  THE SOUTH END OF THE BAY PUNCTUATED BY A SEA STACK

The hike started in a thoroughly obscure manner among the outbuildings of Talisker House, the manor house of the neighborhood since the 1730’s. Boswell and Dr. Johnson stayed there for a few days on their Scottish journey in the 1790’s. After searching around the courtyard fully expecting to come upon a crime scene, we finally found the path to the beach. The path was straightforward and not beyond my abilities until we passed through the second gate and got to a long stone wall down to the sea. We had “arrived”. I found a perch near the stone wall and was delighted to sit there while Fran continued down to the water over the moor in pursuit of the full sheep experience.

 

                THE NORTH SIDE OF THE BAY, ENCLOSED BY THREE MOUNTAINS.

I surveyed a vast panorama from my comfortable rock. On the far left on the South end of the beach at the end of the ancient stone wall was a sea stack plucked from the Oregon Coast, the tail end of the mountains we had just walked by to the beach. The Bay curved to the North, with endless views to North America somewhere 3,000 miles to the West. As I followed the sea to the North side of the Bay, I was no longer on the Oregon Coast. Three even higher mountains closed off the beach, complete with substantial waterfall that looks puny coming off one of the mountains to the plain.

 

                FRAN ON HER WAY DOWN TO THE BEACH

Fran was now pretty close to the water, surrounded by sheep who were enjoying a day at the seaside. The sight of sheep cavorting near the waves was pretty funny, especially since there was no clear route as to how they got there or where they were spending the night. When Fran had had her fill of close encounters with the sheep, we left the stone wall and proceeded back down the path.

 

                THE FULL PANORAMA OF JUST THE NORTH SIDE OF THE BAY. FRAN IS WEARING HER REGULATION NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC RED SHIRT - ALL THE WAY ON THE RIGHT, FOR SCALE.

 

               THE VIEW BACK DOWN THE VALLEY. SCOTCH BROOM IS NOT AN INVASIVE WEED, SINCE THIS IS SCOTLAND!

One of the joys of hiking in Scotland is that the views are so incredible that you frequently find the walk back as exciting as the initial hike. Since the views down the path were so incredible, you really don’t look back at where you started. Our hike back afforded views of the incredible valley we had walked through, complete with even more mountains that ringed the valley and closed off the route back to Carbost.

 

                AT THE END OF THE VALLEY STANDS THE VERY IMPOSING MOUNTAIN OF PRESHAL MOR.

 

                                                                   ANOTHER VIEW OF A FOLD IN THE SOUTHERN HILLS

 

                OUR FIRST "SHEEP DRIVE"

A highlight of our trip back to Dunvegan was our first encounter with a “sheep drive” that blocked the road for a spell. We couldn’t tell who was the most frustrated by the effort to get these sheep to cross the single-track road. The farmers were pretty disgusted by the inability of the lambs to follow their directions, the hired sheep dogs, or the simple example of their mothers who simply wanted to get back to eating on the other side of the road. After some time watching the dogs trying to corral the lambs, the farmers finally picked the lambs up and simply threw them across the road to their bemused mothers.

 

                                       THE LONELY DRIVE BACK TO DUNVEGAN

 We spent most of a wonderful day on our excursion to Talisker Bay. If anything the road back to Dunvegan was even lonelier in the late afternoon. Fran was as usual very intrepid, and I was grateful that at near 8:00 P.M., we still had a few hours of sunlight before dark.

 


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