Now that we had seen the north-east end of Scotland, we made haste to the north-west end. The very north-westest (is that a word?) point of Scotland is Cape Wrath. We would have really loved to go there, but because the cape is separated from the mainland by the Kyle of Durness and mostly consists of moorland wilderness, there are only two ways for the normal human to get there: by ferry and on foot. There is even a Cape Wrath Challenge, a six-day run going from Fort William to Cape Wrath.
Since we were on a time crunch we decided to leave that particular trip for another day. So we headed for the point closest to Cape Wrath which was actually possible for Atlas to reach: Durness.
When I say it was possible for us to get there I really mean it was horrendous, due to the fact that most of the road was single tracked, barely campervan-wide, with few passing places and a lot of tourist-weary locals. Thankfully we were not up there during tourist season. I can only imagine how exhausting that must be. As it was, the stretch that should only take about two or three hours took us half a day and a lot of patience. You would almost think they don’t want any tourists on the Nr. 1 tourist road.
But it was well worth it. Durness is small but makes up for it with a beautiful view of the ocean and (as they point out with various signposts) an award-winning beach.
We decided to go for a long walk and, after packing our bags, headed off down the road. There we went to Smoo cave. The cave is made up of three chambers, a large outer chamber (apparently the largest standing one in Britain) and two smaller chambers behind. What is unusual about it is that the sea formed the outer part of the cave, whereas the inner chambers were created by freshwater rivers flowing through the rocks. It is not known how large the cave actually is because a big part is underwater. There is a siphon, which goes at least 100 metres back into the landmass, but divers have only been able to get 40 metres into it, so the rest is a mystery.
What we really liked about the caves was the fact that the Smoo Burn comes crashing down into the cave from above resulting in a huge waterfall and there are blowholes in the roof of the cave, which make for brilliant lighting.
In a place as amazing as this, there are, of course, a lot of legends and fairy tales circling around it. One of them states that the caves are a door to the Otherworld and is guarded by spirits and fairies.
According to another legend the Devil was angry at Donald Mackay, also known as the Wizard of Reay. He had been a student of the Devil and had tricked him on a number of occasions, the most notable being when his horned teacher was going to take Donald’s soul and instead only got his shadow.
So when the wizard came to Durness, the Devil followed and waited in Smoo Cave, intent on collecting his soul once and for all. Donald had his dog with him, however, who went exploring in the caves. When it then came running out, hairless and howling, Donald knew something was up.
The Devil came to get him, but at that moment the sun came out and a cock crowed, making the Devil powerless. In his rage at not getting the wizard, the Devil then created the blowholes in the cave.
Sadly, we were only able to see the outer cave and the second chamber, which has the waterfall and a boat in a lighted nook. The third chamber is behind the second chamber and can only be reached by boat. The tour guides were not available while we were there, possibly because of Covid or because the tourist season is mostly over, but I think my claustrophobia might be quite happy that we didn’t go into the cave and past the waterfall.
So we went out and up the stairs and, following a route my app suggested, left civilisation and walked through the highlands for a few hours. In theory, there was a footpath for us to follow. And I’m sure it was a path, some twenty-odd years ago. Now it is more of a gathering of rocks and stones that sort of ended up together in a way that could, with a lot of imagination, potentially be interpreted as a path. There are also very adorable little creeks and slightly less adorable and very wet rivers crossing the so-called footpath.
That made for a rather interesting walk. And when I say interesting, I actually mean painful. We had to balance over stones to get over the rivers and while I, in general, do not consider myself completely hopeless when it comes to balancing, the fact that these stones were not meant to be balanced on was very obvious. We made it across all the creeks and rivers, but I did manage to twist both my ankles in the process.
To be fair, the second time was not the fault of the rivers or the rocky paths and more my fault for checking we were on the right route on my phone without stopping, which meant taking my eyes off the road.
The other part that made our walk interesting was the nature which surrounded us. We did not see any wild rabbits or bird, the only animals we saw were a couple of sheep but Mike learned the origin of the joke ‘If you don’t like the weather in Scotland, just wait five minutes.’
Although it might just be a statement. In the space of our three-hour walk, we had rain, sunshine, rain, fog, hail, rain, sun, sump, sleet, drizzle, hail again and finally a light wind, with fluffy clouds and the sun cautiously peeking through. That was at the end of our walk and resulted in a gorgeous double rainbow, brighter than any I’ve seen before!
It just about made me forget my painful ankles.
And then just like that, we were off again the very next day. The only way to go was down, so that’s where we went, along the west coast for over half a day until we arrived at the Isle of Skye, the largest island of the Inner Hebrides.
I had been there before, but mostly my memories included a lot of fog, rain, thousands of biting midges and little else. This trip proved to be very different if quite a bit shorter.
For one thing, Mike and I didn’t get bitten by any midges, which I was quite happy about, but which also means that my husband is very much of the opinion that the tales of horror he heard about the midges of Scotland are exaggerated.
For another, we actually had fairly good weather. Mostly it was just very cloudy, with a bit of drizzle.
We started off by driving up to the Old man of Storr. The Storr is a very large, rocky hill overlooking the sea. In front of the hill, there are a couple of pinnacles which most likely came to being through landslides.
One of them is the Old man of Storr. There are a lot of different fairy tales around that particular stone. Some of them claim that the old man and his wife were giants that were running away from attackers, but then turned into stone. One legend I particularly like says that the old man once saved a brownie’s life and, after asking for nothing in return, they became good friends. But then one day, while the brownie was away, the old man’s wife died and the old man then died from a broken heart. When the brownie returned and discovered what had happened to his friend, he chiselled two rocks to look like the Old man and his wife, in honour of his friend.
After that, we headed up the road. There we came across Kilt Rock and the Mealt Falls.
Behind the viewpoint, there is Loch Mealt, which flows towards the edge of the island and crashes down the cliffs into the sea as Mealt falls.
Further up the coast, the cliff takes on a pleated and almost tartan appearance, which is where it got the name Kilt rock from.
It’s a breathtaking view and on a clear day, as we had, you can even see the mainland of Scotland from the viewpoint. We liked the spot so much that we stayed there for the night.
The next morning had us up and running at dawn because we had a day trip planned. We drove back down the way we came and a little farther south until we reached Glen Brittle. From there we had planned a full day of hiking and walking.
The theory was great, it was a route that tourists liked to use, so we assumed it would be a relatively nice walk.
The reality turned out to be a little different, as is so often the case. Since the weather seemed to be a bit wonky, we put on our waterproof trousers, overtrousers, shoes, jackets and hats and started off. We had barely made it more than a few hundred meters, however, before we reached a river, which was rude enough to flow right across our path.
I don’t know if it really causes much of a problem on a normal day, since there are proper stepping stones to cross it, unlike the creeks and rivers we came across in Durness.
But, as we were told by the friendly lady who takes care of the parking lots, the on-going rain had caused the river to rise and the stones were more suggestions of where one could cross the river if said person wanted to get slightly less wet than if they were to swim across.
This unscheduled learning opportunity was actually perfect for us. It meant that I could practise my balancing skills in the hiking boots, which had a tendency to restrict my movements, and also we got to test out just how waterproof our gear really was.
To be honest, though, that is more a post-adventure insight. At the time my thoughts were more along the lines of ‘Oh no, oh no, oh no!’.
But since we had driven all the way to go for this hike, we were not going to give up after just a few steps. So, after some freaking out on my part, we carefully made our way from stone to wet, slippery and wobbly stone. There was some more freaking out on the way (again only on my part), but thankfully I have a husband who is very patient and not in the least embarrassed when I get stressed out. Most likely because he has had a lot of practice in the last eight years.
After the first Riverdance, it was smooth sailing, really. Well… smoother. We headed up a hill, over the river again, this time with bigger, better and slightly drier stepping stones (Can I hear a wahoo!), until we got to our picture destination: The Fairy Pools.
They’re pretty much one of the most famous sight-seeing stops on the Isle of Skye, at least according to TripAdvisor. A series of waterfalls accumulate there to gorgeous, crystal clear, turquoise-coloured pools.
While I stood by the water imagining little fairies flying and dancing over the pools on a full moon night and wondering just how spectacular the pools must look on a sunny day, Mike realized that what he wanted to do more than anything, was taste the water. Since I was still suffering from post-traumatic-aquanism after crossing the rivers, I was happy watching him from afar, but he assures me that the water tastes like very clean stone.
We trudged on up the hill after that, until we reached another unscheduled learning opportunity in the form of mud. It proved to be rather interesting to walk on since half the path was mud pools as deep as the shallow river and the rest of the path was so rocky it put the hiking path at Durness to shame.
To keep from sinking knee-deep in mud pits we had to balance and jump from stone to stone, with the occasional help of clumps of wet grass. I was particularly happy about that since my ankles were still a little sensitive from being twisted the previous day.
But we decided to trudge on for a bit, hoping that the path would be a bit better further on. It wasn’t. Though the view of the surrounding hills with the low-hanging clouds was great, the path went from muddy to muddier, to single stones, to marshland.
It probably was not helpful that we left the beaten path at one point because someone (notice how I am carefully not mentioning any names whatsoever, here) really wanted to see the rocky hillside up close. That meant going up a ‘path’ that was really more of a stony creek than anything else.
We survived that too, though, and went on along the path into the slightly less muddy and sinking marshland until we decided to take a break. We enjoyed the view but decided not to stay put too long since it was rather cold and I was worried about the fog in the distance creeping up on us while we were off in the middle of nowhere.
We did have our emergency whistles with us, as we do on every hike, but we don’t consider ourselves experienced enough walkers, let alone hikers, to go off into Scottish fog without telling someone exactly where we are going beforehand. And since as far as we could see the path was only going to get worse, we decided to return to the complicated path we knew, rather than the potentially worse path we had not yet seen.
Heading back we got more of a feel of the tourist life of the Fairy pools. On the way up there were people, but they were few and far between. But since it was later in the day when we returned, there were suddenly quite a few groups going walking, hiking and (in a few particularly crazy cases) swimming.
At least one of the girls was wearing a wetsuit. The rest were just in their bikinis. Since I was wearing three layers and still freezing I felt no inclination to join them, whatsoever.
I was actually pretty pleased with how well we got on with our walk, all things considered. I even managed to get back over the river without too much of a fuss. That feeling did fade a little when Mike decided to do a Lilo and went and twisted his ankle. It made me rather glad that we were heading in the direction of Linlithgow the next day.
We took everything else we had wanted to see off the list since all of them included planned walks and hikes. However, we did have a quick stop at Eilean Donan castle. The weather was not too great again, so we didn’t hang around, but at least Mike got to see it and we read up on the history of the castle and a little of the MacKenzies, while we were at it.
The destinations we had taken off our list were then added to our Scotland bucket list for next year since there is still so much we want to see. And so we headed back to our HQ in Linlithgow to regroup, replan and collect some more hugs.