THE VIEW FROM OUR BATHROOM, FOR GOD'S SAKE!

This week I would like to introduce you to the wonders of the Isle of Skye. Fran and I were privileged to spend more than three and a half weeks on Skye from late April to the middle of May. Most visitors are lucky if they get more than a few days on the island, and we reveled in adopting the slow pace of life on the island, which offers so much to see and do that we still didn’t get to go to all of the top spots. It was so wonderful to realize that we always could try again tomorrow, and that we would have a chance to actually return to a place that we found really attractive. While I don’t think I could actually live in such a rural place, it was delightful to be able to pretend that we were actually living there instead of just passing through. I know that in this day and age it is probably impossible to just stay in a place till you are bored and then move on, it sure was nice to lay back and enjoy rural life for even a short while.

                 A VIEW OF BEN NEVIS AND THE GREY CORRIES ON THE WAY TO SKYE

I do mean rural. Let me repeat, rural. We stayed in a place so small that I would be grossly exaggerating if I called it a village. It was stretching it to even call it a hamlet. Glenhinnisdal is a collection of  of maybe two dozen farm houses along a dead-end single track road off one of the main roads on Skye. We were so lucky to share a house there with our landlord Jeannie, who allowed us to glimpse her world which was so different from Southeast Portland. We were introduced to life on Skye at "Half of Three", her cottage whose address followed the system on Skye where even “congested areas” just listed the houses in consecutive numbers, since there were rarely even multiple streets. Jeannie was a delight, helping us with everything we needed, especially when I got really sick a few days into our stay. She was also thrilled that we were staying so long, since the Summer “madness” would start upon our moving out. She was completely booked for short stays until September, so our long stay was kind of like a mini-vacation for her too.

                HALF OF THREE AND IT'S ENVIRONS

Let me reemphasize rural. Fran met a few of the neighbors on her short walks down the road, but after a week we both knew everyone’s cars, the arrangement of the houses, and the location of most of the livestock in the area. We could comment on whether the neighborhood horses had gotten their blankets today, or wonder when the cows emerged from their barns at the beginning of May. Both of Jeannie’s neighbors owned sheep farms, and the cavorting of the lambs delighted us endlessly just past the fences on both sides. Then one morning every single sheep was gone, moved on to other pastures. For almost three weeks the only sounds we heard were sheep and birds. A few of the other houses were also inns, but there was not even a pub on our road. It turned out that it was really fortunate that we were only twenty minutes away from Portree, which is the only real town on Skye. Portree has a small street grid which we eventually mastered, a real supermarket, and a few shops and pubs. As we toured the island we eventually realized how well located our little rural hideaway really was, once we drove to places that were really out in the boondocks. Skye has a population of about ten thousand people, on quite a large island. There are about 100,000 sheep on Skye. Need I say more?

                 PORTREE HARBOR - MOST OF THE SMALL STREET GRID IS TO THE RIGHT, ON THE UPPER LEVEL. PORTREE IS PERHAPS AS BIG AS CANNON BEACH, AND NOT NEARLY AS URBAN. ONE QUARTER OF THE POPULATION OF SKYE LIVES HERE.

The reality of Skye is that it is just so beautiful that you really can’t go wrong - the next turn will reveal a beautiful vista often more spectacular than the one you just left behind. It is completely unnecessary to visit the top ten or even fifty spots, since you soon realize that a completely unheralded spot is worth an entire afternoon. I had thoughtfully equipped us with a few Ordinance Survey maps that covered most of the island, and these allowed us to go down roads and attempt to visit places that few besides the local cottage owners had bothered to drive past in months if not years. Fran was game, and even though some of these explorations were decidedly boondoggles, we did find some places that were seriously off the beaten track. You know you have left most of civilization when the local post box is the only landmark on the route.

                SKYE IS SO CONVOLUTED IN SHAPE THAT YOU ARE USUALLY LOOKING AT OTHER PARTS OF SKYE ACROSS PART OF THE SEA. HERE ARE TWO VIEW AT THE START OF THE "SCORRYBREAK CIRCUIT."

That’s the other side of Skye. There is very few attempts to try to fit the reality of its rural nature to the needs of all of the tourists. It almost seems that in having enough gumption to actually get there, Skye expects you to get along with rural life and even wilderness and not the other way around. The roads are so small and winding that you soon realize that everything will take at least twice as long to get to, no matter what the map says. Most of the roads are single-track, which can lead to very awkward if not dangerous situations if you actually encounter “traffic.” Fundamentally, I soon decided that the only reason a curve in the road merited even a sign, much less a rudimentary guardrail, was that someone had actually died there - it was not any more dangerous than the previous half a dozen curves that had not merited any caution.

                                                                  FRAN AT THE START OF THE HIKE BEFORE THINGS GOT HAIRY. THAT "WELL DEFINED PATH" TURNED INTO A REPEATING SERIES OF STONE "STEPS". IT WAS ONLY "WELL DEFINED" BECAUSE IF YOU VEERED OFF TO THE RIGHT YOU MIGHT ONLY BREAK YOUR LEG AND NOT DIE.

And then there were the hikes. Fran and I went on a forty-five minute “jaunt”, reputed to be one of the easiest hikes on Skye a few days into our stay. Granted that I probably already had come down with some virus that kept me in bed for a few days. That still doesn’t really explain why Fran and I were both proud and suitably chastened when it took us four hours to finish the “Scorybreak Circuit”. We were so confused that we thought that we had gone on the wrong hike. Yet the images I’ve shown you here matched up with at least four guidebooks we consulted and then threw back on the bookshelf, never to be trusted again. Skye caters to the young, and most people anywhere near our age turned out to be mountain climbers. We resolved to try to never again exceed our abilities, and mostly succeeded.

                                                           THE IDYLLIC SECTION MID-HIKE. IT SOON GOT WAY WORSE AGAIN.

In my next few essays I will show you more of this remarkable island, which has some of the most remarkable scenery on the planet. Hopefully I will inspire you to visit Skye so that you too can slow down and experience this magical place.

                                       FORTUNATELY WE MADE IT BACK TO THIS -SHEEP, BIRDS, CLOUDS, AND DISTANT MOUNTAINS FOR ALMOST THREE WEEKS.