Blown away by Skye

Wow, it's been a while.

I won't try and fill you in on the past six months. But the last two weeks have been very busy indeed.

Firstly, I ran a marathon. And I actually ran the whole thing, too. Excuse me for being a wee bit boastful :)

It was the Loch Ness Marathon, which goes along the eastern side of the loch and finishes in Inverness. 10 degrees, sunny, and crisp wintry light. It was all rather surreal by the end, when I was hobbling along at about 8km an hour. I had to choke back tears at the end when a lady gave me a banana, shortly before I collapsed against a tent and needed another runner's girlfriend to help me up again.

But before that, I had a week travelling around Scotland with Tom.

The intention was to go to Skye, and we were both pretty excited about it with loads of plans for long climbs in our heads. We landed at Glasgow airport, picked up a hire car, and struck out northwards along the A-road past Loch Lomond. The first glimpse of Ben Lomond, shrouded in cloud on the other side of the loch, always gets my heart pumping in anticipation of better hills to come.

We picked up provisions in Fort William then continued the two hours or so to Skye, passing through magical Glen Shiel, then across the super-steep bridge on to the island. The landscape was instantly different - but not what I was expecting. The closest part of the island to the mainland almost felt Australian; it was flat, scrubby, and empty.

But then we saw hills ahead, which we eventually worked out were the Red Cuillins. We were heading for the Black Cuillins, a more jagged ridge and the most rugged part of the island. We left the main road and drove around an almost-empty coastline, on a narrow single track, before we pulled up near a farm to pack our bags for a two or three day trip.

Our aim that afternoon was Loch Coruisk, snuggled up beneath the sawtooth skyline of the Cuillin ridge. To get there was about a three hour walk (or a boat ride). We set out in the rain, up over a hill, before dropping down to the bay of Camasenery with its bothy and hunting lodge.

Here we had to ford a stream. Nothing had indicated this might be a problem. So we ploughed across what looked like a shallow bit. But all too quickly I found myself hip deep, struggling for balance, desperate not to fall and start the trip with sodden clothes and backpack. Tom, with his somewhat longer legs, made it across fine. He had to come back and rescue me. It turned out the stream was still tidal at this point - and it was just as well I hadn't been stranded too long, because the tide was coming in rather fast.

We then edged around the coastline, past the 'bad step' (a bit of rock jutting over the sea that requires some delicate footwork to pass) before arriving at the most amazing spot in Britain. In fact, it looked more like Norway - steep hills plunging straight into a blue sea, with islands, and rounded grey-black rocks glistening. The loch was just a few hundred metres from the coastline, and the two were linked by a cascade.

We wandered up to the loch and tried to find a sheltered spot to camp, settling for some high ground next to rocks. We were both tired after the early start (to think we'd been in London that morning!) so cooked dinner and went to bed. We both had a great sleep - interruped only by a deer trying to poke its nose under the edge of the tent to steal our food.

The next morning was decently sunny by Scottish standards. We had been dreaming for weeks of this day - climbing Dubh ('doo') Ridge. It was meant to be a scramble/easy rock climb. On our way to the base of the ridge, we saw deer, who looked at us cautiously. Or perhaps they were the faces of guilt, at having tried to steal our breakfasts.

I was completely jelly-kneed for the first half of the ridge. It was basically layer after layer of slabby rock, with few handholds. But this shouldn't have mattered, because the rock was so spectacularly grippy you could walk up it at almost comical angles. I was just chicken.

The higher we climbed, the less view we had, as the cloud came in. I started to get the hang of things, though, and the only time our ropes came out was for a spectacular abseil in howling wind nearing the top of the ridge. By the time we found the summit, we were shrouded in cloud and whipped by wind. I'd also lost the fingertips of my gloves, the rock was so rough and grippy.

We didn't linger and the descent was through a steep boulderfield, eventually dropping down beside a stream that plunged straight into the ocean of the day before. We found our way down to the shoreline, and spent a few minutes watching a colony of seals (they didn't do any tricks), looked for mussels (and found none), then gathered some blackberries and headed back to the campsite.

Then we made a somewhat rash decision. Down by the loch was a gravelly beach, which we thought might be sheltered, so we moved our tent down there. Tom put his engineering skills to good use diverting a small trickle of water around the tent. And after an invigorating skinny dip in the loch (or skinny-walk, in my case) we set about making dinner.

The first mishap was that I ate a slug. Tom had made me a seafood chowder cup-a-soup, but neglected to check inside the cup. I was thinking my seafood chowder was lovely and thick and gooey, when I noticed a black thing bobbing in it. At first I thought maybe it was a mussel (in a cup-a-soup!) before Tom suggested it was slug. And indeed it was. All that gooey thickness was, in fact, slug mucus. Blerk.

Then, while we were cooking the main course (pasta), a wave flooded the porch of our tent. I suggested perhaps the loch was going to fill up, as it was raining heavily by this point, and blowing a gale. But Tom laughed it off. Yet after a few minutes, another wave arrived. Then another. Then another, each one creeping up a bit further than the last. Eventually we worked out the waves were coming when the wind abated. So, presumably, the wind was pushing the surface of the loch away from us. Whenever it slackened, all the water came rushing back, lapping at our sleeping bags.

So after dinner, we decided we had better move the tent back to our original site. As we did so, a pole snapped. Not good news, given the wind was so strong it was hard to walk.

All that night the tent banged and bent and flapped and made all sorts of terrifying noises. I wondered where I would take shelter if the roof was ripped off. But I needn't have worried, as it was still there the next morning. In some parts of scotland they had 100mph winds that night. I'm pretty sure our campsite was one of them.

We cleared out as soon as possible the next morning. It was still raining and the loch had indeed filled up. Our beach was under half a foot of water. Waterfalls were gushing into the lake from all sides, and we had many a cold wade across rivers to get back to our cars about four hours later.

Once inside the reassuringly solid metal of the car, we considered our options. Camping that night wasn't one of them, as far as I was concerned, so we opted for a bunkhouse near the Talkisker whisky distillery. It was the foulest weather I have ever seen that night, as we went into Skye's main town, Portree, for fish and chips. For the record, pubs in Portree are best avoided. Don't try and find out why.

There was no chance of walking, scrambling or climbing the next day, either, so we drove up northwards to the pinnacles of the Old Man of Storr, then back down past Uig with its ferry terminal to the Outer Isles (man, I'd love to go!). All the while we talked about what to do the next day.

When the time came, we headed for the mainland, bedraggled as refugees. Tom wanted to go to Torridon, so we drve even further northwards. But the rain kept coming and coming, so the peaks of Torridon were invisible - which made me want go even more badly, of course, but Tom overruled me and swung the car eastwards.

I fell asleep, and woke up in Aviemore, on the other side of the country, near the high plateau of the Cairngorms. The weather forecasters had promised us dryness here. It was still raining.

That night we headed into the hills again. We camped by a loch. We returned the next day, again windburnt and wet.

At this point, the two of us decided we had had enough of wild places. So we went south south south, down among the trees, to a lovely town called Dunkeld, near Perth. We stayed in a grand, musty hotel. Although I didn't see any, I bet there were stag's heads in the dining room.

Finally, right at the end of our trip, we got three days of climbing in sunshine. Wearing t-shirts! It was a beautiful valley, too, with the trees just beginning to turn their autumn colours and the Tay steadily winding along. And the blackberries were the best I've had.

Now that's an anti-climax, isn't it?

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