Black Cuillins - Skye

The peaks in the distance

Our final walk on Skye was another long one, but this one was much easier than the mega ridge walk we had done. This involved very little elevation gain, it was a bit of a walk in two parts. The first half of the day you are walking down a wide valley with the Black Cuillins off to one side. The second half of the day was a pure coastal walk. There's this thing called a Munro in the UK, which is a mountain in Scotland with a height over 3,000ft (or 914.4m for those not stuck in the dark ages). There are 282 of them, and some people make it an ambition to climb all of them. What is important about the Munros and the Black Cuillins is that one of them is called the Inaccessible Pinnacle, good name. Apparently it's the hardest Munro to climb, because it actually involves some rock climbing. Though some guy took his mountain bike up there, so perhaps it's not really that hard. Check it out here, you can see him scaling the pinnacle at about 4:20.

Looking towards the Cuillins

Great views, but the seaweed really stank here. Or it may have been a dead

sheep. Either way, not that inviting for a swim.

So that's not what we did. Though watching this video definitely makes me want to go back and do that ridge, maybe skipping the pinnacle. Aaah if only there were more holidays, and fewer awesome places to visit in the world.

Our walk was much easier, though still quite long. You walked alongside these great mountain ridges for the first three quarters or so, then the last bit was along the coast. This last bit seemed to take forever, there were all these little inlets that you had to keep following. Since it really was a cliff face you were walking along you couldn't cut down to the beach to take the easy way out. At this point we were all pretty tired so just kind of trudging along without thinking too much. Then you look to your right, and it was a sheer drop maybe 50m down to rocks at the bottom, the only reason we hadn't noticed before was these little shrubby trees. They wouldn't have stopped you if you had fallen, just blocking you from seeing the danger. Apparently a couple of people have died along this section. Realising that certainly woke us all up.

Last view of the cliffs. I'll be back!

Even though this cliff section did feel interminable, it did have some great views. It was kind of like Fiordland National Park in New Zealand, it reminded me of the area around Mitre Peak. Pretty good that you can get that level of beauty and wildness in the UK.

I really did enjoy those 5 days in Skye, it may be a fair way to get to, 3 hours from Inverness, but I really think it's worth it. I think the next stage is to start embracing the backpacking, that way we don't have to keep walking out. Man I reckon you could string together some good multi-day walks on this island.