Midway through our cycling holiday in Scotland, we took a second day off the bike to get to know Portree and the area a little better...
To be honest, my knees were complaining quite a lot, which posed a bit of a dilemma for me. Taking a day off cycling makes little difference, and walking instead of cycling is in fact worse. But I did feel in need of a rest, or at least a break, even though the town I chose to take that break in is a hilly one. Either way, my knees were not going to have an easy time of it.
So we descended the steps.
Portree is famous for its colourful buildings. In postcards, the town looks related to Cornwall, bathed in soft pastels and dreamy lighting.
The harbour and general atmosphere is, however, as lovely as it appears in the pictures.
Only in Scotland could you expect to find a business selling peat logs!
Leaving the harbour, I very much wanted to find the cafe that my sister and I had sought refuge in one day during our visit to Portree in October 2008. It was in an upstairs room and I couldn't tell from street level whether that space was still 'occupied' and, if so, by the same cafe business or not. And then I couldn't remember where the entrance to the cafe was! We found it quite by accident -- fortunately -- and everything inside was reassuringly the same as I remembered.
We arrived in Cafe Arriba around 10.30am thinking we'd just have drinks while admiring the view. The cafe was very quiet and we found a table overlooking the harbour.
I pulled out my small notebook and began jotting down thoughts for blog posts about our trip. I expected to find, faced with the time and opportunity to write, that my mind would go blank, even though I had been repeating key points to myself while cycling along in the preceding days. Fortunately, the moment I uncapped my pen, the words began to flow in a steady stream.
When I surfaced half an hour later, I saw the cafe was filling up.
We ordered another round of drinks and I kept on writing...
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| Superb cappuccino, made with coffee beans sourced from Vermont! |
Time flew by, as did the words flowing from my pen. Then the lunch menu boards went up and thoughts turned to lunch.
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| Variation on a Greek salad - delicious! |
On leaving the cafe, we walked along the main road edging the cliff over the harbour.
Some of the gardens and landscaping amazed us with the obvious commitment and attention to detail of the caretakers.
One creature we encountered much more often in Scotland than at home was the bumblebee. I spotted one feeding amongst the flowers along the clifftop and tried to get his photograph.
As mentioned before, the foxgloves were stunning everywhere we went. I hadn't seen foxgloves anything like this since I was a child in Oregon.
Fuchsias were also very abundant.
Here is a "normal" iris, alongside something I suspect is quite ordinary but for which I do not know the name.
This house kept catching my eye. It is quite ordinary for the area but I loved the flowers around the front.
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| A modern variety of rose |
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| As well as a more fragrant old-fashioned variety. |
From this vantage point, the coloured buildings look much more "romantic" than they do up close!
The skyline of the upper town -- both from the harbour and from the clifftop road -- is dominated by a tall monkey tree.
Returning to the town square, we went into the Visitor Centre, where it suddenly occurred to me to ask if there was a local rural bus service that we could perhaps use to have a look around the local area.
As it happened, the summer X61 service had started just the day before. This runs twice a day around the entire northern end of the Isle of Skye -- clockwise in the morning, then anti-clockwise in the afternoon. We could catch the afternoon departure in just a wee while and be back in Portree just after 5pm.
So we killed time looking around the town square -- and then got on a bus for the afternoon! (My knees liked this plan very much!)
In the middle of the town square is a large display with a map on each side, both drawn by the J. Maiklish Mole. One is titled Every Road on the Isle of Skye; the other is A Walk Around Portree. Both are pen and ink drawings in inticate detail, intriguing and informative in themselves, but the real beauty of these maps lies in the labelling. Mr Mole's method is, he states, heuristic-touristic: "I undertake the journey in order to be able to recall it, and although this results in more or less accurate, navigable maps, the objective along the way is always the mapping out of the lived experience and the impression left, rather than of the terrain itself."
The result is surprising and delightful. Every building in Portree (aside from houses) is identified and annotated -- most often usefully such as "cafe", "bank", "Police Station", although some simply say "can't remember". A "helpful man" is recorded on one footpath (sidewalk) in the town centre. Other notations include "many rabbits" and "helluva place for oil tanks!" Cafe Arriba is identified as "Real Coffee and Grub", which is a higher accolade than that given to the Granary Restaurant ("cafe").
The maps were commissioned in 2013 by ATLAS Arts in collaboration with the Portree Community Trust. Each map took approximately two weeks for Mr Mole to complete. For the Portree map, he walked every road, path and pavement, making a note of every incident, interaction, point of interest and association encountered, to the point where he had built up a "detailed psychogeographical image in his memory".
The results were far more interesting than your average map. Studying them took up most of Adam's time waiting for the bus -- while I relieved my knees on a park bench for part of our wait.
One other creature loitering about in the square was a large crow-like bird with unusual markings, later identified as, indeed, a Hooded Crow.
At the appointed time, we boarded the bus for our road trip.
Skies over Portree had been grey and dull all morning. As we left the town heading north along the coast, the cloud ceiling and attendant swirling mists meant we could not get any kind of view of the Trotternish Ridge or the Old Man of Storr. This was as good as it got --
In rural Scotland, "Share the Road" sometimes means something different to what we're used to in London... and here, the road user hierarchy puts four-footed beasties at the top.
For the most part, our ride on the bus required nothing more than gazing out the windows at stunning scenery.
The bus stopped for 15 minutes at Kilt Rock, giving passengers time to disembark and lean over the railings to view the falls. We opted to stay on the bus -- I've seen the falls before and wasn't keen to test my vertigo. And this was as close as Adam wanted to get to that piper!
Nonetheless, we enjoyed the full panoramic views.
Leaving Staffin behind, settlements around the top end of the island are few and far behind. And the road gets narrower and the gradients steeper.
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| I'm afraid we have absolutely no idea where this was! |
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| Part of the Quiraing |
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| Views northward toward the Isle of Harris |
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| Loch Cleat and the Duntulm Coastguard Cottages |
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| Tulm Bay |
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| Tulm Island |
Somehow we did not get a good view of the ruins of Duntulm Castle on this trip but the site is well worth a stop and wander around - very atmosphere, especially in the fog while mulling over the legend of the chieftain's infant son who fell from a window to be dashed on the rocks below!
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Duntelm Castle Hotel (closed up and sold at auction early this year)
On the far left is Duntulm Castle (a 14th/15th century castle held and conquered alternatively by the Macdonalds and MacLeods; abandoned in 1732 and largely cannabilised for Sir Alexander Macdonald's new residence 5 miles to the south).
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Having rounded the top of the island, we now headed down its western coast, with views away towards North Uist.
Looking back towards Tulm Island --
We had a brief "traffic jam" at the entrance to the Island Life Museum, to which we would return the next day on our bicycles.
A glimpse at the croft houses at the Island Life Museum - more on this in my Day 7 report.
The road to Kilmuir --
Kilmuir does not have a village centre as such. Residents live in houses strung out along the A855 road to Uig (shown here) with a few long driveways stretching off both up the mountain and down to the sea cliffs. There are at least two schools (serving the whole north end of Skye) a community hall, I believe three churches serving very different religious denominations.
Just to give you an idea of how remote communities such as this are: There is no store or even a small newsagents. The nearest grocery store (and it's very small) is in Uig, as are the nearest petrol station and fire station. The nearest police station is in Portree, 20 mountainous miles away, as is the nearest hospital (with 18 inpatient beds), with the nearest General Hospital beyond that being in Raigmore, more than 120 miles from Portree (3 hours by road ambulance).
Apparently, if you disregard the Outer Hebrides (also called the 'Western Isles', an archipelago comprising from northeast to southwest: Lewis, Harris, North Uist, Benbecula, South Uist and Barra), Kilmuir is the only parish in Scotland where more than 40% of the population still speaks Scottish Gaelic. (Oh, and Flora Macdonald is buried here.)
Another aspect of isolation is the northern latitude's affect on daylight hours. While in the summer, sunrise is around 4:20am and sunset around 10:30pm, in the winter the nights close in dramatically, with daylight hours shrinking to just 6 hours 41 minutes with the sun setting around 3.45pm and not coming up again until well after 9am. (Adam and I discussed the pros and cons of living in Portree and agreed the long dark (and cold) winters here would be a deal-breaker.)
And there are very few pubs out here -- none in Kilmuir. There are 2 or 3 in Uig but otherwise, you will need to go to Portree for a "pub night out".
So if it's thoughts of... long cosy evenings in your "local"... gathered around a roaring hearth fire with your neighbours... while an affable landlord plies you with whiskies... that attract you to packing in your stressful urban life down south for "the good life" in the relaxing fresh air of a place like Skye, be forewarned: this is likely no more than a southerner's fantasy.
Through Kilmuir and up and over another lump of mountain, we come up Uig. With a population of about 200, this is one of the larger towns (larger being a relative term) on the west coast of Skye (the other being Dunvegan).
Uig itself nestles around the inner bend of a natural protected inlet. On the northern shore is the main pier for ferry transport between Skye and the Western Isles.
The road into Uig is very steep, hugging the mountainside, with one tight hairpin turn (switchback).
The passing place near the top was occupied by 3 cyclists. (We would stop here ourselves the next day, as the views are simply stunning.)
Approaching the hairpin --
Looking down at the ferry port --
Uig Bay --
Somehow the cyclists got ahead of the bus!
Our bus driver drove us out to the ferry port for a short "pit stop".
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| Uig is the home of the Isle of Skye Brewing Company, brewers of Skye Black (which I enjoyed on our first evening in Portree), also Skye Red, Skye Gold and Skye Blaven. |
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| Businesses and holidaymakers alike all queue for the ferry. |
A 'fishmonger' was parked up near the ferry port selling fresh fish from the back of his van.
His sea produce was all simply (but professionally) packaged and labelled, so we thought....
... there's dinner for tonight sorted then!
This was our bus --
Looking back at Uig as we climb up away from the inlet southward bound --
With such glorious weather, it was easy to forget that it is with good reason that Skye is known as the Misty Isle. Cresting the top of the climb out of Uig, we were confronted with.... this.
Fortunately, we were in the fog for only a short time, leaving it behind us when we turned inland to cross over the backbone of Skye to return to Portree over on the eastern coast.
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| More cyclists |
We amused ourselves by spotting roads we had cycled on in previous days! Here, we could just make out, at intervals between the trees, the road we cycled the day before from Carbost to Portree.
Back in our hotel room, we feasted on fresh salmon. We did not feel the lack of proper plates of cutlery -- it was an indoor picnic and we savoured every morsel.
Tomorrow, we'll be back on our bicycles, retracing our steps to Kilmuir and the Island Life Museum.
Today, no cycling miles but here is where we went:
It's always nice to find sunny weather when you're expecting clouds, which I imagine is especially rare on Skye. Also, I keep telling myself to bring a pencil and pad of paper along with me on rides, because that is when I get ideas to write about, but I never have anything with me to record them on!
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