eBothy Blog

Cameron McNeish has a good video up about his trip to Suisinish and Boreraig, the two superbly situated villages in the south of the Isle of Skye. The local Skye Gaelic dialect pronounces them as soy-nish and boy-rick. We’ve visited these villages many times and they are indeed atmospheric places. This area has been settled since at least the 8th century, when Saint Comgan had a chapel on both sides of Loch Eishort, Teampuill Chaon, where he preached around 720AD. The rock in Loch Eishort opposite Boreraig is called Sgeir Gormul (Gorm Shuil – Blue Eye), which is named after a famous witch of the area, so it is a very old and richly heritaged place. Until Lord MacDonald decided he needed the sheep money more than the meagre rents from the people and cleared the lot. It was a particularly nasty clearance and you won’t find any mention of it in the historical display at the Clan Donald centre in Sleat. At least 1000 years of human habitation wiped out overnight by a despot.

However, the Clan Donald Lands Trust are trying to create a new village at Kilbeg, which is more or less across the loch and just over the hill at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig and Skye is becoming a centre of innovation in both cultural and technical issues. With the predictions that global warming will turn southern Britain into a washed out mosquito ridden wasteland, while the north will become more akin to the tropics, who knows what this area will look like in another 1000 years.

If I had one single ounce of this person’s talent I’d be happy. All the way through you think, “that’s superb” but it just gets better and better and better. This person knows how to “see”. Just look at the detail that emerges.

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With a new exhaust on the car and a weekend free to do as I wished, I headed off on the first ferry last Saturday morning, hit Mallaig and headed for the car park at the bottom of Glen Nevis where I managed to squeeze into the one remaining place. It’s always busy this time of year but most folk don’t go past Steall, choosing to laze around the wire bridge having fun and picnics. It’s a stunning place. A bit like the Lost Valley in Glencoe only more accessible and the walk up the gorge is always a wonderful experience, especially after an hour or so in the car from Mallaig. My plan was to make for the high lochans on Binnein Mor and take in Binnein Beag on the way. I couldn’t remember having climbed these two hills before and I was tidying up loose ends before making for my last munro, so I thought I’d head for the Mamores and camp as high as possible. The weather was just about perfect. Not too warm and not too cold with the frisson of excitement created by the storm forecast to hit the area in the early hours of Sunday morning, promising winds gusting to 70mph and torrential rain. My kind of weather!

Grough have an interesting article about Naismith’s Rule and associated gubbins by various baggers who have modified it over the years. I’ve never been a great fan of it myself as it’s a bit too cumbersome when you’re on the hill but for nights spent poring over the maps with a single malt in hand, it gives a rough idea of how long a walk will take. 4kph and 1min per 10m ascent seems to cover it for most people. An average group will average around 3kph over the entire day, taking into account slow ascents and faster descents. (more…)

Well, it’s actually even better. Fly from the Scilly Isles to Kirkwall in the Orkneys for 32p. OK, you need to change planes 5 times and fly through the night but for 32p I don’t mind that! That was how much it cost Hammond and May from Top Gear to post a letter from Scilly to Orkney. It then cost them 90K to race it in a Porsche thingy. But it got me thinking. Why do I have to pay 100 quid to fly from Inverness to London and back when a letter can fly the entire length of the British Isles for 32p? Someone should apply the economics of mail to passenger air travel.

Flight leaves the southwest of England at 00:30, stops in various places along the way such as Essex, Manchester, Edinburgh and RAF Kinloss, arriving Kirkwall as the sun comes up. OK, you’d have to stand the whole way as you’d be sharing with several hundred thousand other cheapskate passengers on the flight and whenever you land you’d be whisked off to a big warehouse where you’d be sorted into groups for the next stage of your respective journeys. If you’d managed to get on without paying, you’d be escorted to your final destination by the postie and if the person you were going to meet wouldn’t pay your fare, back to Scilly you’d be sent.

It would cut down on needless piffle at your destination, perchance a business meeting, as your colleague would not require to ask from whence you came as you’d have your origin stamped on your forehead.

You could bag a free return trip by getting your friend to write “return to sender” on your forehead after your two weeks in the Orkney sun.

32p. It’s tempting…

It’s only early July but yesterday brown leaves were being blown from the trees and today I saw the first turning of the bracken, up at about 150m. There are cold north westerly gales and the choppy waters of Broadford Bay form a stormy backdrop to a newly ordered pile of logs outside a house on the shore and yet the Bog Asphodel only just started flowering a couple of weeks ago in Lochaber. Och aye, the nights are fair drawin’ in!