Again the scenery is amazing, huge rock formations, pretty crofting villages, green pastures, ragged hills, islands, peninsulas,    ….. a real mixture of remote landscapes. We didn’t stop though there are a number of sites/sights we will return to today. One of these is the Old Man of Storr, a fat needle pinnacle of rock which you can climb up to, as well as some interesting waterfalls and other natural features.

After we had booked in tour campsite, and ascertained the laundry facilities weren’t working, we headed in to the village to do our washing. This took an hour, hanging out in the local grocery store. Then we headed down to the beach Staffin Beach where Hilary played in the sand, I looked for dinosaur footprints (there are some fossilised in the rocks) and di folded washing. It was so nice with the sun trying to shine that we decided to have dinner there, which we did. Cooked it up beside the beach in the back of the truck, watching the sea, boats, seals and Hilary playing on the sand.  After dinner it was still nice, Hilary was keen to  have another play, so I made dinner for the next night while Di and Hilary made forts and other sand structures down amongst the incoming tide.

There was a slightly red tinted sunset from about 10pm going on until 1100 or so. We went to bed just after 11, it was still quite light, the pop-top sun-roof-air letterinner thing in the roof glowing pale as we went to sleep.

The red sunset didn’t come to much, though there is a patch of blue sky it is surrounded by wet dark clouds which splat rain showers our way every now and then. We will press on though, and pray to the sun gods for a bit of action.

Portree harbour

?? Dinosaur footprint

Staffin Beach

Staffin Beach

We drove down the west coast of Skye, stopping first at Kilt Rock and waterfall. It is so named because at times the falling water appears in pleats, as a kilt. The water falls 200 feet in a vertical (obviously or else Newton was wrong) but in this waterfall straight off a cliff to the sea below. The wind was so strong it caused a singing in the railings (really cool), but it was freezing as you can tell from the photos. I was wearing 2 layers of merino, a tee-shirt, a long sleeved polar fleece and a sleeveless fleece, my gore-tex coat, and merino mink scarf and gloves and beanie, oh and jeans. I was still chilled to the bone!!! We didn’t linger.

Kilt Rock Falls

Looking south from Kilt Rock

The next stop was a couple of miles down the road at the Lealt Falls, a pair of waterfalls a hundred metres or so apart, spewing peat dyed water over cliffs on a stream in a narrow gorge headed towards the sea another 100-200 metres further on.

Here we clambered down a sheep track come human track to the rocky beach to examine a diatomite processing plant (ruins). Diatomite is the remains of diatoms which are microscopic sea shells. This was mined from a loch about 3 miles inland, transported across rough moorland and then partially dried before being loaded into wagons which were pulled by people along railway tracks to this processing plant. Goodness knows how they got it down to the shore, though there is an old iron winch at the bottom of the gorge, beside the creek. At this plant it was further dried and heated to get rid of any remaining plant material, and then ground to powder. Diatomite is used in paint and polish production, dynamite, for filtering beer and used as a lining for insulation in ships’ boilers (when they had such things). (Is it what I call Fuller’s Earth?? I wonder. Oh I wish I could get on Google). Anyway being sheltered from the wind down the cliff was quite pleasant, and it wasn’t until we ascended nearly to the top again that we felt its full icy blast.

As it was sunny and only having fast moving skiffs of icy rain we decided to climb up to The Old man of Storr. It was about 50 minutes up, at times very steep, and in patches very muddy due to all the rain and the popularity of the walk. The track was partly through pine forest and partly grasslands studded with rocks and rock formations. The views were amazing as was the Old Man himself, and Storr (a pinnacle) and the huge rock faces behind. The Old Man from certain angles is quite obvious, you can clearly see his right eye, his left I think has suffered from a palsy at some stage, and his nose and chin ravaged by syphilis, however he’s not looking too bad for his age. We sat and ate chocolate and almonds in a sheltered spot out of the wind, it was very pleasant and exhilarating looking down the slopes.

After our walk we had lunch in the van, hot pumpkin soup (with lots of garlic) and cheeses and crackers, with fresh strawberries for afters. Then we headed off to Portree for coffee and a couple of grocery items before heading back to our campsite. It had been a wonderful energising day, and we were all feeling great, which is just as well because the next hour was taxing to say the least. The campground has very narrow hard sites made of gravel/grit. The road between sites is barely a campervan width wide, and the sites opposite very close. Hence the reversing manoeuvre into the spot is tricky. I had been doing really well with my driving, even reversing!!!  Well not this evening. I missed the site by a few inches (easily done I say) and to the side of the pitch is grass which would be OK except we are in Scotland so the truck couldn’t get back onto the gravel because all the rain had softened the soil (read mud). So I carefully drove forward a couple of feet across the road way, not thinking straight, and put my front wheels about 6 inches onto the grass opposite. Not sensible!!!!! It was so boggy that the truck just sank like a stone (well boulder really) into the mud and couldn’t reverse out due to the slipperiness and the bump back up onto the gravel road. It took a good hour of work from me, Di, Hilary, the campground manager, a lovely Welshman and his English (male ) partner, a friendly Dutchman and even friendlier Frenchman, a shovel, many rocks, bucket loads of gathered gravel and grit and the Frenchman’s 2 plastic track things which are flat pieces of caterpillar track virtually (an excellent commodity for such circumstances I must say) to get out. We made a mess of the campsite that’s for sure.  Needless to say everyone suggested I go and park up on the top sites (away from them I think) where it wasn’t so muddy. In my defence I’d like to say there were a number of pieces of evidence in the grassed areas that I wasn’t the only one to have had trouble in the mud that day!!! Anyway I went up to the top site, backed into the spot feeling really unconfident because there were grass patches everywhere waiting to trap me, reversed too far and smacked my tail light into a bank shattering the plastic in the process. After dinner and two glasses of Lithuanian whisky I didn’t care anymore.