Skye

At 4pm on Friday a week ago I decide to forgo a bank holiday weekend at my desk in favour of a hastily-arranged trip to the Isle of Skye. Liz needed to find her study species, an innocuous rock cress (Arabis) related to Arabidopsis, and had room for a few extras in the car, so Sigrun, Charlotte and I tagged along. We had great weather for the long drive west. We took the scenic and less busy, but possibly slower and certainly hillier route, up Deeside, through the Cairgorms and over the Lecht to Inverness. From there we headed up the Ness to Loch Ness (no monsters on this, my first visit, but I was driving and am not sure the others were really paying enough attention to the dark, ripling sufaces). Halfway along the loch, we headed west, through more mountains and along Glen Shiel and eventually to Kyle of Lochalsh, where we crossed the Skye bridge.

We stopped for a coffee in Port Righ, before heading north to Storr on the Trottenish Peninsula, where the plant was to be found. By this stage the weather was closing in a bit and by the time we climbed through the forest to the spectacular baslat rock formations known as needle rock and the Old Man of Storr, at the foot of Storr, things were getting nasty - wind, rain and cold. Worthwhile nonetheless, as we found the first plants within minutes and then found plenty more around the bases of the cliffs, some even in flower.


We stayed in a youth hostel on the west side of the Trottenish Peninsula, in a very small village called Uig. The dorms were smelly but adequate. We dined at a hotel near to the hostel, myself on a fine venison haggis, washed down with some local ales and whiskey. Sunday's weather started equally miserably, with a howling wind, but things improved through the course of the day, but changing dramatically every few minutes. We drove back to Storr around the north of the peninsula, stopping for some iron-age Pictish ruins and castles etc. I was pretty amazed and (pleasantly surprised of course) to receive a call from Jane on my mobile as I emerged from an underground Pictish dairy storehouse, on a windswept clifftop, surrounded by a lot of nothingness and facing west only towards the outer Hebrides. Weird. I didn't get reception anywhere else on the island.


Later that day, we drove further south, down Glen Brittle along the west side of the spectacular mountain range known as the black Cuillin, in awe of the knife-edge ridges which are strangely popular with hillwalkers and climbers who are presumably less bothered by heights than me. We visited a beach at the end of Glen Brittle in a brief gap between showers and then headed back towards Uig via Dunvegan and its (expensive and closed, anyway) castle. Had a nice stroll through the woods there. Another night at another small hotel/pub in Uig and then a slow start on Monday before the long drive back, this time via an almost-too-cute village called Plockton. Weather conditions weren't the best for photography, but here's a few (some courtesy of Charlotte). Click on the photos to look at bigger versions.


Other highlights of the last weeks include the Lemonheads last Wednesday - a good-sized crowd from the Macaulay turned up to see Evan Dando looking and sounding much the same as ever. A good gig, a fact emphasised by a hilariously bad support act. To be fair, it was probably their first gig in public rather than in front of a mirror.

I've spent the last week as the guest of the very hospitable Colin and Victoria, nearby to work and will move into my new flat this week.

...and oi, leave some comments on my blog so I know someone's looking at it!