Skye has many names: the misty isle, the isle of cloud; the tongue-twisting An t-Eilean Sgitheanach in Scottish Gaelic.
Anyone who wonders why the Norse word skuy, meaning misty isle, ended up giving the island its enduring moniker need only spend a day here to find out why.
The last couple of days have seen the island shrouded in thick mist and rain. You have to take the rough with the smooth when you travel, especially in parts of the world like this, and we really have had to contend with some very rough weather for the last two days.
Yesterday, we drove out to Neist Point Lighthouse.
After lunch in Dunvegan, we headed for the coral beach, just beyond Claigan. It’s only about 1.6 km hfrom the end of the road to the beach, but it started to rain while we were there and eventually began to pour. After searching for shells with the children, we arrived back at the car, looking like drowned rats.
Today, we made the incredibly scenic drive to Elgol and took a boat to view some seal colonies near Loch Coruisk. After viewing the colonies, the boat moored to allow us do the short hike to the loch, whose views are reputedly stunning.
Well, no sooner did we set foot on land than the heavens opened. It rained incredibly hard and we were blasted by a very strong wind that seemed to come up out of nowhere. There was nothing we could do. Our shoes and boots quickly filled with water and our trousers were soaked through to the skin. We were dressed for windy weather and could withstand intermittent showers, but not the full scale barrage of rain that trounced us here.
Back aboard the boat, we were treated to some much needed hot chocolate. The four of us were completely soaked, though, mercifully, it wasn’t too cold on the boat. I took off my shoes and wrung out my socks, pouring a sizeable amount of water out of each shoe.
Back on land, we took off our wet clothes and ate a very late lunch. That didn’t leave much of the afternoon, so we drove over to the Kyle of Lochalsh to see the Skye Bridge and that part of the island.
Tomorrow, we leave Skye and take the ferry from Uig to Tarbert in the Outer Hebrides. From there, it’s an hour’s drive to Stornoway, where we’ll be based for the next few days. It should be a fun trip up to there.
The Isle of Lewis is quite some distance north-west of here, so it’ll be more remote and probably have even worse weather. I’m sure we’ll still have fun, though, and I expect there to be fewer tourists. On Skye, one in every five cars seems to be French, German or Dutch, with those pesky ubiquitous Dutch accounting for the majority of the foreign vehicles.