Caliban – Opinion and Righteous Anger

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.

Did I mention that driving distances in the west of Scotland are short, but driving times are long?

We rolled down the hill from our hotel in Tobermory on the Isle of Mull just after 10:00 this morning, travelling just 400 metres to the quay from which the ferry to Kilchoan departs. The ferry wasn’t due to leave until 11:00, but you can’t pre-book it, so it’s first come, first served. Saturday is also the switchover day for a lot of people. Some people leave for holiday or just a weekend away, whilst others are returning home. As such, it was prudent to queue well ahead of time.

We made it to the Ardnamurchan peninsula in the pouring rain, arriving at 11:30. From there, it was a long, undulating and exceedingly winding drive along the peninsula on a single track road. The beauty of the surrounding landscape was breathtaking, but the slow rollercoaster ride meant that I had to concentrate on the road and have my foot ready to slam on the brakes if another car suddenly appeared in the middle of the road from around a blind bend.

It took a couple of hours to read Mallaig, which is the departure point for the ferry to the Isle of Skye. We had enough time to eat a relaxed lunch before checking in for the 15:10 departure to Armadale.

On Skye, we had just over another hour of driving to do, heading up the eastern side of the island, along a surprisingly good road to Portree, where we pulled up in front of our hotel at 17:15.

We’d been travelling all day, or so it felt, and yet had only about 162 km to show for it. It truly felt closer to 2½ times that. To top it all, Lucas puked all over himself in the last few hundred metres, having endured the twists and turns of the whole day without a single multicoloured yawn.

Check out the drive to see the route we took.

We’ve come quite a long way north now. The five day weather forecast is for rain every single day. There was certainly plenty of it today, but it scarcely matters when you’re in the car for almost the entire day. Rather that than that you have to drive on a gorgeous, rain- and cloud-free day, the like of which we saw for a couple of days on Mull.

Skye is very large, so we’ll only be able to scratch the surface of it on this visit. It’s the largest island in the Inner Hebrides and the third most popular tourist destination in Scotland, after Edinburgh and Loch Ness. Given the lateness of our arrival, we opted for dinner in the hotel and so haven’t really even seen Portree yet. That will come tomorrow.

The further north we travel, the more affinity I feel with the landscape. There’s a tranquility here that can’t be overstated. The forbidding green escarpments and deep blue waters have me yearning for more. I find myself inspired to revisit the Faroe Islands and rural Iceland. For all the delights that this world has to offer, there’s nowhere quite as beautiful to me as the north Atlantic and its island chains.

I’ve actually never missed the UK since turning my back on it in 1991, but if I were ever to contemplate living in the British Isles again, it would surely have to be somewhere in Scotland.

The clan of the Macdonalds originated on Skye. It’s therefore perfectly plausible that my ancestors, too, hailed from here. They bore the name, after all. I know nothing about my ancestry before my grandfathers, so anything’s possible. Knowing my lot, though, somebody probably assumed the surname Macdonald to evade the authorities. I could have a sizeable stream of Scottish blood coursing through my veins or, more likely, none at all.

We drove to central western Mull today and caught the tiny passenger ferry to the island of Ulva, a small island in the Inner Hebrides with a population of just 16.

One calls the ferry by sliding a wooden panel from left to right, which reveals a red background. When the ferryman in Ulva spots the red on the Mull side of the water, he brings his boat across and escorts you to Ulva.

There’s even a café on Ulva, called The Boathouse. Needless to say, it’s the only place to get anything to eat, as there are no shops and there’s nowhere to stay. It reminded me a little bit of Mykines in the Faroe Islands, but that island is vastly more remote and has only half the residents of Ulva. Everything is relative, even here.

The Boathouse also serves dinner on a Friday evening, but has a waiting list that runs almost to the end of the summer. There was no hope for us to get dinner there, so, after a successful afternoon’s hiking on Ulva, we came back to Tobermory for dinner.

It was glorious weather again today. I hope it continues, of course, but the forecast is against us once more.

Tomorrow, we leave Mull and head for Skye, the most northerly island in the Inner Hebrides. The journey will require a further two ferry crossings and a lot of winding road. I hope Lukie’s stomach holds up for it. It didn’t today.

Today was a significant departure from the usual drive, hike and beachcomb: the Isle of Mull Highland Games. It’s been a sun-kissed day of tossing the caber, putting the shot, hurling the hammer and watching sweet young things do the highland fling to the strains of the local bagpipes.

We hadn’t deliberately timed our visit to Mull to coincide with the island’s highland games — no wonder it was so hard to book a hotel here — but we’re glad of the fortuity that made it so. Also fortuitous was the weather. Not one drop of precipitation did fall from the sky, a firmament marred by nary a cloud. The temperature was perfect: not too hot, not too cold, and with low humidity. It really couldn’t have turned out any better for an event like this.

Eloïse and Lucas both took part in impromptu sprint races, but I couldn’t quite persuade Sarah to go in for the overseas ladies race (which was won by a girl from the Netherlands).

Neither Eloïse nor Lucas won, but they enjoyed their participation, which is what counts. Lucas did very well, in fact, for a two year old. He was racing against some five year old boys.

I have to say, it was an absolute blast. I thoroughly enjoyed myself today and I think I can safely claim the same on behalf of the other members of the clan.

Mull is stunning, even more beautiful than Arran. Almost all of the island is accessed by single track road, much of it winding, hairpin bends. A 20 km journey yesterday took us about an hour and a half. Lucas was sick twice in the car. He’s become very, very prone to car sickness.

The distances here are short, but driving times are long. You can’t go very fast and any given journey will require some stopping and reversing into a passing place, so that your opposing vehicle can pass you. This means that practically every driver you encounter on the road is someone you exchange a wave with, in thanks for the courtesy or reversing and enabling your two vehicles to pass one another.

I really can’t enthuse enough about Mull. It’s incredibly beautiful and the local folk are friendly to a fault.

Yesterday, I downed what was perhaps the world’s unhealthiest fry-up. My full Scottish consisted of fried egg, fried sausage, fried bacon, fried tomato, fried mushrooms, fried black pudding and fried haggis. I skipped the black pudding and haggis today; even I couldn’t keep that up for long.