SKYE-HIGH

We’ve all met them because they’re everywhere except the one place they’re always talking about. The Scots.

“Och, aye,” they say, “Scotland’s a right bonny place.” And they go on for some time telling anyone who’ll listen about the lochs and the heather and the ‘whusky’.

By the time they are through, there really is only one thing to do. Go and see for yourself.

But don’t go expecting clear weather and shining skies. This is the part of the world where one saying goes: ‘If you can see across the loch, it means that it will rain soon. If you can’t - its already raining.’  A slight exaggeration perhaps, but the moisture gives another dimension to the landscape. Bracken and heather, moss and turf darken, seeming to soak into the earth. At the horizon amethyst mountains run into the clouds, like a newly finished watercolour. And of course you can expect rainbows – fiercely brilliant ones bridging chasms, or cobweb-fine, curled in a valley.

But suppose you haven’t got very long? Scotland is a surprisingly large place and because of its tattered coastline and the lack of, or relatively poor condition of its minor roads, you can take ages to get somewhere. Those one lane roads with passing bays can look like fun – and it is friendly to wave to the occupants of the other car as it passes – but a nuisance, bordering on absolute frustration, if you need to get somewhere in a hurry.

So, if you’re short on time but want to get a feel for Scotland in microcosm, visit the Inner Hebrides.

Skye, the largest island of the group, is perfect to give you Scotland distilled into a manageable draught. Although almost 80 kilometres long, because of its strange shape  (its Gaelic name means ‘winged isle’) no part is further than eight kilometres from the sea. In the midst of the island, the Cuillins, a violent black range that someone once described as ‘the essence of all that can be terrible in mountains’ rising to 1000 metres, have given climbers thrills for over a century. Even the less adventurous can hike for days in the rough moorland country here.

Every child singing ‘Speed bonny boat, like a bird on  the wing...’ knows that Skye has something to do with Bonnie Prince Charlie,  yet it seems the prince as such never really set foot on the island.  In 1745 Flora MacDonald and her friend ‘Betty Burke’ landed at a lonely cove and, while she distracted the officers, ‘Betty’ was smuggled back to the mainland and made good his/her escape. The faithful Flora, is buried at Kilmuir only 15 kilometres or so away.

On Skye, you feel as remote as anywhere in the highlands. In all directions the heather adds a pink blush to the treeless hills. It’s all there – coppery bracken, green, green grass, Highland cattle like so many shaggy orange yaks, worried blackfaced sheep flicking their long fine white wool in the faces of border collies yapping at their dainty ankles, and farmers in cloth caps whistling expertly to the dogs. At the water’s edge - and let’s face it, there is more water’s edge in Skye than anything else - tea-coloured water laps against granite thick with lichen, and every house stands looking out to sea, whitewashed, slate-roofed, tight-lipped against the cold.

The good news is that Skye is hardly remote at all. From the south a short ferry trip from Mallaig brings you to Ardvasar and those ubiquitous highland roads take you through forest and farmland across the island, past extinct crofter’s cottages, thatched and rising from the ground like warts on an old face.

Reaching the mainland to the north is even quicker. A bridge links the Kyle of Lochalch now connects the island with the mainland. In no time you are set to explore even further north or return to Fort William and the south.

 

There is much to see on Skye – Portree, the capital set high over the harbour, with its wonderful wools and tweeds and plaids; Uig, snug in its horseshoe of hills, the jumping off place for the Outer Hebrides; Kilmaur’s croft museum or Luib’s folk display.

However you choose to do it, next time a stranger starts to talk about home, you’ll understand their nostalgia. For you too will have smelt the ‘tangle of the Isles’.

2009 is Homecoming Scotland Year. I am going ‘home’, and maybe every other person with a drop of tartan blood should do so too!