"Jon, it's snowing." Jane wakes me the next morning and points out the window. A late April storm has blown in off the North Atlantic overnight, and the moorland is covered in white. Through the billowing weather, I can barely see the gravel track leading beyond Dougie's yard down toward the highway. We get dressed and head out into the conservatory. I keep the ring box in in my vest pocket, but have a pretty strong sense that I won't have much use for it today. The breakfast table in the conservatory is like a snow globe, with the flurry of white whirling all around us. Dougie comes in and apologizes - the storm has knocked out electricity to the house, and breakfast preparations have been more cumbersome than usual. He and his wife somehow nevertheless produce kettles of tea and coffee, and piping hot platters of eggs, sausage, and scones. After we eat, Dougie again helps us run through our itinerary for the day. I tell him that we were originally planning to climb Ben Tianavaig (Norse: "Harbor at the Foot of the Hill"), a dramatic seaside mount south of Portree. As a former policeman and search-and-rescuer, he strongly advises us against doing so (we are inclined to agree, having barely been able to stay on-path in clear daylight at Glenbrittle). He recommends some alternatives that are less palatable to Jane and me (i.e. the Talisker whiskey distillery), all the while profusely apologizing for the power outage and any inconvenience caused - though why a Scottish man should apologize to us on behalf of Scottish weather in the Scottish highlands is totally lost on me. His credit card machine being non-functional without an Internet connection, we pay for our stay in cash (Dougie kindly offers a discount on behalf of the weather) before running our belongings to the car in the snow. High beams on, we drive down the gravel track, leaving behind the Eubhal House and what was surely one of the warmest and loveliest places we've stayed in both our travels.
We head east to Portree and then turn south to Broadford, stopping briefly (in hopes of waiting out the weather) at the Aros Visitor Center to view their museum display on Scottish sea eagles. We continue to the turn-off toward Ben Tianavaig, and looking at the blanket of snow covering the mountain, we decide that we are fully satisfied by Dougie's wisdom, and we will not attempt the summit in near-whiteout conditions. The ring box sits quietly in my vest pocket, waiting for another day.
We continue south past Sligachan, following the highway as it curves around the coast, past Loch Ainort and the Red Hills of southern Skye. I hop out of the car at two points to take the photos above and below, of the environs around Loch Ainort and of Marsco (Norse "seagull hill"), one of the more prominent peaks in the area. Back in Broadford we stop again for groceries (the usual) and to fill the tank of the Mercedes for the first and only time before the airport car return (!), a testament to the diesel engine's efficiency. The weather is beginning to clear as we leave the Broadford Co-op, and from the parking lot, the water out in Broadford Bay is choppy but blue, and the grey-curtain storm clouds are far to the north. In clear skies and sunshine, we leave town and turn right on the A851 toward Armadale, bound for the southernmost tip of Skye.
The road curves and winds along the coast on the Sleat Peninsula. The morning sun is glimmering off the surface of the sea lochs when we stop roadside to visit a memorial to the Scottish soldiers who fought in the Second World War. As we pass Armadale and the ferry terminal to Mallaig on the mainland, the highway becomes a single-lane country road. We continue through the Aird of Sleat, a peaceful little crofting community in the south of Skye, nestled in the rolling hillsides beside the ocean. It is around here that Jane discovers BBC's Gaelic station on the car radio, and we are regaled by bagpipes and Highland folk music for the rest of the trip. It is a fitting soundtrack for the white, single-chimney cottages that pass us on the roadside, their backyards filled with spring lambs frolicking in the sun.
When the road ends, we park behind the village church, where an arts shop and photo gallery is open for business. Our walking gear with us, we pass through a sheep fence and head west on a gravel track, on a 3-mile route to the tip of the peninsula. Though we are standing in a patch of shimmering blue coastline, the wind remains blustery, and the dark Atlantic clouds move rapidly across the island around us. We pull our hoods over our heads and, carefully circumnavigating a family of grazing cows, we continue on toward the Point of Sleat. At the end of the gravel track, we ascend a stone scramble to our left and skirt along the edge of a farm fence, picking our paths through the mud. At length, we reach the back side of the farm, and the grassy path diverges - one going down toward a cove of crystal-white sand, and another climbing the heathery hillside, toward the end of the peninsula. We take the latter route, bound for the lighthouse on the headland.
The peat path across the headland is winding and muddy; Jane's socks are wet for the third time in as many days. We climb up and down the hillside, emerging onto a long slope with views opening southward toward the sea, the rocky Hebridean coast, and the distant isles of Eigg and Rùm. At the land's end, we can see a small white lighthouse sitting on top of the last hill. We walk down along the grass path, finding a set of concrete stairs built into the hillside; we descend these and walk toward the rock pools beside the ocean. The path narrows as we round the bend, becoming a tiny strip of land that leads to the very Point of Sleat. We climb one last heathery knoll, tiptoeing around a black-faced ram and his newborn lamb as they descend in the opposite direction. The top of this last hill is green and grassy; we run to the end, to the concrete path leading up to the beacon. From the lighthouse, we are surrounded on three sides by water, with views back toward the bulk of Skye to our north, the Scottish mainland to our east, and the outer Hebrides to our west. It is a marvelously beautiful and truly lonely place; we have not seen another person for hours. The ring box is still in my pocket, but we do not linger; the winds are still whipping around us furiously, and we are both eager to get off the headland and return to the car.
Back in the Aird churchyard, we visit the photo gallery before eating lunch in the backseat of the car. It is around 4 PM. We drive back up the peninsula, re-joining the A87 and continuing east. In the village of Kyleakin, a settlement of fishing boats, pubs, and bed-and-breakfasts on the west side of the narrows, we check into the Kings Arm Hotel, just beating the arrival of a bus full of elderly tourists. Jane takes a nap after setting her socks out to dry, and I head out to photograph sunset. Taking the car, I cross the Skye Bridge, passing the Kyleakin lighthouse and Gavin Maxwell Museum on Eilean Bàn. On both sides of the bridge, a traffic marquee warns of snowy conditions overnight. On the other side, in Kyle of Lochalsh, I turn into a residential neighborhood near the Plock of Kyle and find parking outside of an apartment complex. A few minutes up the road and just a few concrete steps up a lovely hillside covered in golden, blooming gorse, there is a picnic area with panoramic views overlooking the bridge to the south, Kintail and the Five Sisters to the east, the sea to the north, and Skye to the west. With Jane warm and asleep across the water, I am free to sit there as long as I want. I take a timelapse series over the next hour as the sun drops toward the mountain ranges on the Isle of Skye. The stiff winds blow in a column of clouds from across the Atlantic.
