Slack-jawed, I stand staring out across the sparkling blue waters of Loch Slapin towards the complex east face of Blà Bheinn. A series of buttresses and scree-filled gullies leads up to a crenelated skyline of spiky rock towers erupting from a rollercoaster ridge. The British Isles don’t get better than this.
That thought has barely taken form in my mind when a huge bird silently drifts into my peripheral vision; it must have flown directly over my head and is now gliding across the water towards the mountain I’m staring at. A golden eagle. It turns and, with two lazy flaps of its wings, begins heading out towards the open sea. It’s several seconds before I realise that I’ve been holding my breath.
The Isle of Skye is like that. Just when you think you have seen the best it can offer, it offers up another surprise.
I had spent the previous few hours wandering among the ruins of Boreraig and Suisnish, cleared of their human inhabitants in the middle oflocations typical of Skye’s rugged coastline – a coastline that twists and turns and twists some more for about 370 miles, taking in a series of peninsulas divided by slender sea lochs.
