Our last day on the Isle of Skye began with a disappointing voicemail. Well actually the day began with an epic struggle to remove ourselves from bed into the shower and out into the car for 7am. Five days of driving, walking, late night card games and excessive biscuit consumption was starting to take it’s toll!
We were driving to Elgol where we were booked on a boat for the Isle of Rum: star location in BBC’s Autumnwatch series, as well as many other wildlife programmes. Another contributing factor in the mornings’ fatigue was a night of hyperactive anticipation at seeing deer, White Tailed and Golden Eagles, otters, ponies, goats and much more! However the bubble of boyish excitement burst about 5 minutes into the drive when CB picked up a voicemail from the skipper warning that the seas were likely to be too rough to sail (or whatever correct term for a boat without sails is?!) out to Rum.
After a particularly stunning drive, we arrived at Elgol with low expectations. Just as well as all charters to the Isle of Rum were cancelled for the day. Not wanting to waste our efforts, we decided to jump on a boat headed for Loch Coruisk.
The boat trip on the Bella Jane was great, we saw a couple of Shags (for those with a similar maturity level to myself, I mean Phalacrocorax aristotelis), a Great Northern Diver (this is a bird) which was a real thrill and plenty of Harbour seals which are always a welcome sight to me!
Once we arrived at Loch Coruisk we had one and half hours to scramble/ ramble. With an estimate time of 3 hours to walk the circumference of the Loch, your options for exploration are a wee bit limited. With hindsight we would’ve done the longer trip. For anyone considering the walk back to Elgol from Loch Coruisk, consider well, because I saw the ‘bad step’ section of that walk and I would say ‘danger of death step’ might be a bit more appropriate! But then, I’m not really known for my love of heights, quite the contrary in fact and apparently in the good ole days herdsmen would walk their sheep and cattle this route.
The area is simply stunning, and it’s easy enough to reach some mountaineering-esque viewpoints! After taking it all in and getting over the awesomeness of such rare views (for us anyway) we decided to walk away from the Loch and our rambling shipmates. We happened to stumble upon a beautiful sandy cove (with no footprints!!) it was the most peaceful experience of the holiday by far; until we noticed the time and had to peg it back to the mooring!
Our serendipitous visit to Loch Coruisk was possibly the highlight of the Skye trip and is a real ‘must see’ for any Skye Walking Jedi!
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