Elgol

At nine o’ clock last night we’d had enough of the two hire vans parked next to us. Noise from inside and the running of the engine of one of them. So we moved Marge to the motorhome area in the main car park, where overnight is not allowed, but there were four other vans there. Bonjour. Next to Marge was a van from France. A very retro Ford transit built sometime between 1965 and 1986.

This morning we were up early, just in case we incurred a parking fine. The attendant came around and said we were fine to be parked there. The overnight restriction was to stop the car park being turned into a camping area, but a blind eye was turned to vans that stayed over. Thanks, we’d been worried all night we wouldn’t wake up early. Of course one of the noisy vans from last night was long gone, keen not to pay.
Today we wanted to visit some places listed in the new book we bought yesterday. Loch Fada, the Bride’s Veil Waterfall, the Fairy Glen and Elgol. We decided to give Coral beach a miss.
The weather played games with us. Today was supposed to be fine. As we left Portree it rained.

Then when we arrived at Loch Fada it cleared away, the sun slowly teasing away the cloud. Quickly let’s get down the road to the Bride’s Veil Waterfall.

Send John up through the bog to take photographs. Now onto The Fairy Glen. It was like being on a Rabbies coach tour of Skye.

Not wanting to drive Marge over the narrow switchback road that passed the Quiraing we took the scenic route to the north, the road hugging the coast most of the way. Mistake. The newly laid road soon returned to that of potholes and in two places subsidence. Oh, by the way don’t look down. A collapsing road, large potholes, let’s throw a loose cow into the mix. The inquisitive creature sniffed at the fuel filler cap on a van coming in the opposite direction. I don’t want it sniffing me. Neither does we Marge, let’s just pass by slowly. Time had run away from us, so we stopped for lunch at Uig. The sun was now bright.

The car ferry arrived for the Outer Hebrides and we noticed our French neighbours from last night were in the queue.

The Fairy Glen was great. Like a film set for a hobbit movie. A landscape of miniature small cone-shaped hills, rocky outcrops and tiny lochans. It was like a secret place, except it wasn’t, other people seemed to want to visit as well. On the internet there were pictures of fairy rings. Circles in the grass dotted with small stones. The rings were visible, but someone with OCD had tidied up the stones, arranging them in a large pile in the centre of the rings.

Time ticking we set off for Elgol a journey of a fair few miles. At Broadford a fuel stop for Marge. The last fifteen miles of the journey were a little challenging, narrow and slow. The Cuillin mountains closed in on us, seeming a little daunting in the low cloud. We arrived at Elgol harbour by way of a very long, no, very, very long steep hill. It’s going to be a difficult start to the day tomorrow Marge, you’ll be wheezing by the time we reach the top. We’ll apologise now.

Elgol is one of Skye’s most famous photography locations. If the weather is clear the jagged peaks of the Cuillin mountains can be clearly seen. Sadly not this evening. The honeycombed cliffs, huge boulders, and striated bedrock are all striking.

It has been a long day, but we have enjoyed seeing more of the island. Tonight the fresh breeze blowing off the sea will hopefully rock us to sleep. An early start tomorrow, as we are booked on a lunchtime ferry back across to Mallaig on the mainland. This has been our second visit to Skye this trip and our third in two years, but not our last. We know we’ll return sometime. There’s still more to see isn’t there Marge?