Day 11 - Portree / Broadford / Armadale/ Ferry to Mallaig

Journey Wisdom It only ever rains twice a year on Skye - October to May and June to September

In the morning, we cooked breakfast on a nearby drystane dyke. Luckily, the weather was 'nearly' dry, but the weather forecast was not good. Heading south, our first stop was at Sconser, which is where the ferry goes the short distance to Raasay, now more famous for Calum’s Road. This is a highly recommended book about an islander building his own road on the island.

Race the Mail Van.

We branched off the main road shortly after this and onto the old single-track road which skirted around a 'small' mountain. The road was a pleasure to ride on. The only traffic was the Royal Mail van which was constantly passed us as it dropped mail with talkative crofters waiting at their front gates with eager anticipation.

Just before coming to the main road, the clouds had thickened from dark grey to midnight black and the rain was baling out all down the road, another six hour downpour in the 20 feet per year annual rainfall of Skye. Most of the scenery had vanished. I did 45 miles with my head down as the rain came in torrents. The road from Portree to Armadale was newly built, wide, straight, and with fast rain-spraying traffic.

Why did the Slug Cross the Road?

These cars whizzed along in carefree abandon, eating up the miles in seconds. It was the opposite of us, We both found it a struggle. My helmet was pinging with the spasmodic tattoo of heavy rain; in minutes rivers of water were running down my back. The scenery pulled down the shutters, and before long my blinking, slitted gaze had dropped to the wet road in front of me. Nothing to see but big black slugs crossing the road. Slug tennis anyone? Many hundred were deliberatley squashed with a Schwalbe Marathon front tyre!

This was a long horrible day and we were both glad to eventually turn into the ferry terminal. Several washed-out bus tours, and cars full of abandoned campers were all there for the ferry to Mallaig. The ferry was packed for the short journey and, as everyone was wet, the humidity in the lounge was the same as outside, just a little bit warmer.

Mallaig - the end of the line!

Mallaig bubbles with arguing gulls, and there is that wonderful smell of seaweed and diesel. I’ve always enjoyed Mallaig; it has that atmosphere of a frontier town. It does the hard industry and tourist mixture ten times better than Oban or Fort William does. Not enough B &Bs though: after trying several, we ended up at the Mallaig Hotel, and it turned out to be ideal for our needs. A shop directly opposite enabled the purchase of several bottles of beer some excellent fish and chips and we sat back for a well earned rest and watched the telly. This made up for the pretty shitty day we had just experienced.

Who owns the Cuillins?

In 2000, John Macleod of Macleod, the 29th chief of Clan MacLeod, found himself public enemy No1 when he announced that he planned to sell the Black Cuillin mountains, part of his estate on the Isle of Skye.

MacLeod needed to raise money to restore Dunvegan Castle, his 800-year-old family home sitting precariously at the very top of Skye. The Cuillins, which cover some 35 square miles had public access for many years. Many of its public visitors thought they already 'owned' it.

The asking price was £10 million which, after capital gains tax, would leave him with the £6 million necessary to replace the leaking copper roof that had been fitted 40 years earlier. He also had plans to build an 80-bedroom hotel on the estate. When he said that he would not proceed with a sale if the government would agree to fund the necessary repairs to his castle, he was accused of blackmailing the nation. The fact was that the castle, said to be Britain's oldest continuously inhabited stronghold, was in mortal danger.

Organisations such as Historic Scotland had offered money, but nothing like enough. After MacLeod declared his intention to sell, the National Trust for Scotland investigated buying the Cuillins for the nation, but an agreement could not be reached. MacLeod took the Cullins off the market. In 2003 when there was a suggestion that public bodies and conservation agencies would put up £10 million for the repairs. MacLeod would hand over ownership of the castle to a trust, with his family continuing to live in a part of it; the mountains would be in public, or in charitable, hands.

This plan too came to nothing. Then, in January 2006, a consortium put forward a £30 million project, to be partly funded by the National Lottery, which would restore the castle and create a £4 million visitor centre; the Cuillins would be run as a kind of 'wilderness park'; and MacLeod would give up ownership of both the castle and the mountains, though retaining a right of residence. The bid for lottery funding was, however, turned down last April.

Currently, the John Muir Trust looks after the area but they would be hard pushed to produce title deeds