Is It Safe To Sit Down?

I'm in Berlin this week with work. Hopefully I'll get to see a few of the sights while I'm here but so far the most startling thing I've seen is the warning on the toilet in my hotel room.

I'm not sure how close I want to get to that toilet!

Keep Heading West

What constitutes the UK mainland? One definition (that many delivery companies use) would be anywhere you can drive to without needing to take a ferry. Under that definition Skye, although clearly an island, is part of the UK mainland. That means that the most westerly point of the mainland is to be found on Skye and not on Ardnamurchan as I'd always thought (in my defense when I went to the most westerly tip of Ardnamurchan the Skye bridge hadn't been built).

The most westerly point on Skye is Neist Point and we made the short walk from the car park out to the coast. Of course the view west from the very edge of Skye would be just sea so I stopped a few yards short to take a slightly more interesting photo.

I didn't build up the little stack of rocks just to add something to the photo it was already there. In fact there are so many stacks of rock the trick would have been trying to take a photo without including one. Here is the view looking back eastwards and as you can see someone has been very busy.

Apparently they get built up every year and then the first winter storm arrives they all vanish.

Fairy Pools

Having been shown around Trotternish on our first full day on Skye, we moved south into the Cuillins on the second day to do a walk in Coire na Creiche. The walk follows the river, which has cut fairy pools (circular pits made by the river spinning pebbles around which drill into the rock) into the rock giving fantastic scenery. On a nice day I'm sure it would be spectacular, but with the low clouds and rain it was magnificent.

The walk requires crossing a stream at two different points. A few days before we had arrived on Skye the Mountain Rescue service had been called out to help a party who had got stuck out by the fairy pools. There had been about 2 inches of rain in just a few hours and the streams had become impassable. Not wanting to be rescued we had checked both crossings (they are both close to the car park) on the way out to make sure we could get back. There was a lot of water but both were easily crossable. It then rained, a lot. We stayed mostly dry given that we were well prepared with waterproofs (my new Gore-Tex jacket worked perfectly) but the rivers started to fill up. By the time we got back to the crossing the stream was quite a torrent. One of the crossings was impassable and so we had to detour to the other one. We got across but there was an awful lot more water than when we had set out. Another hour of rain and we might well have been stuck.

We then drove to the Sligachan to fully dry out while sipping a nice cold beer.

Trotternish Mosaic

On our trip around Trotternish I've so far shown you The Storr, the Diatomite works, Kilt Rock and the Singing Fence, and the view from the car park for walking the Quiraing. There is of course an awful lot more to see. Rather than boring everyone silly with lots and lots of posts on the same subject I'll finish talking about Trotternish by showing you a selection of other photos we took that day.

The View from the Car Park

The view from most car parks is usually pretty dull. Even in the middle of the highlands of Scotland car parks are often situated out of the way or hidden among trees. There are, however, some notable exceptions. For instance here is the view from the car park you would use to walk the Quiraing on Skye.

The view is looking almost directly west towards Staffin Bay and takes in the Qiraing on the left, all the way around to Loch Leurn na Luirginn, Loch Cleat and the crags of Dun Dubh on the right. I think you will agree that it's quite the view!

Kilt Rock and the Singing Fence

The third photo opportunity on our whistle-stop tour of Trotternish was the Kilt Rock viewpoint.

From the viewpoint the most impressive sight is actually the waterfall which was all the more impressive given that it had rained almost non-stop for all of August.

Kilt Rock is actually the rock formation at the back of the photo. It is apparently called Kilt Rock as the columns look like the pleats in a kilt. I'm not entirely convinced myself but it was a lovely spot in which to stand and enjoy the view and listen to the fence sing.

To stop people leaning out too far while looking at the waterfall and to stop them being blown away when it's windy a fence has been erected along the edge of the cliff. For some reason the tubular metal fence contains a number of small holes. The holes combined with the gaps between the rails and a strong wind make the fence sing!

Diatomite

The next stop on our trip around the Trotternish peninsula of Skye was the Diatomite works at Inver Tote. Diatomite (known locally as Cailc) was discovered at Loch Cuithir in 1886. By 1889 the Skye Diatomite Company was extracting Diatomite from the loch and transporting it via railway to drying sheds at Inver Tote. The remains of the sheds can still be seen today although the railway has long since gone.

For those of you who, like me, have never heard of Diatomite before, I'm told that it is a whitish clay like deposit of microscopic shells. It has a number of industrial uses but it is probably best known as the additive used to make nitroglycerin stable giving rise to the patented product -- dynamite. If you want more details then the Wikipedia page is quite informative.