Highlands really are just one big extended village!
TWO golden eagles circled above the cliff tops as I climbed steep wet slopes of long grass and bracken, I’d kept my kayak gear on as protection against the wet and the ticks.
To the casual tourist like me, much of Raasay, with the isles of Tigh and Rona to the north, appears to be wild, unspoilt country, a haven for wildlife. The truth, as with much of the Highlands, is rather different.
Until recently this was a very human landscape, every rock and bay has tales to tell. Raasay once had a population of around a thousand but a succession of bad landowners in the 19th century evicted everyone from the fertile south, forcing people to emigrate or scratch a living in the barren north and on Tigh and Rona.
Most of Raasay became a sheep farm then a sporting estate, the few determined crofters were confined in Arnish behind a high stone-built “Berlin Wall”. It was the 1920s before government and landowners were shamed by land raids and public outcry into allowing resettlement in the south.
People quickly abandoned barren Rona and Tigh to move back to more fertile land and Arnish too began to depopulate, partly because the only link to the outside world, other than by sea, was a rough footpath nearly two miles long.
Raasay is famous for Calum’s road. Calum MacLeod lived in Arnish, for half a century, the Inverness council had ignored Calum’s pleas to construct a proper road. So in the 1960s, Calum, now in his mid-fifties, decided to do the work himself. Over the next 10 years, he moved and broke rocks, excavated, levelled, built bridges and passing places.
Rumours abound of the numbers of picks, spades, wheelbarrows and boots he wore out in the process.
When the work was completed the council was eventually shamed into tarring the new road. The road is steep with sharp bends and cut into hillsides above the sea; it makes a fine walk.
Only around 150 people remain on Raasay, most live in the south and few now make a living from crofting.
Rona has just one dwelling, some holiday cottages and a naval base at the north end. The long eastern coast of Raasay boasts spectacular cliffs and steeply angled native woodland of birch, willow, rowan and aspen; old maps show a path between the cleared settlements of Screapadal and Hallaig but I doubt this ever existed and the only practical way of seeing this east coast is by sea.
Now I had the opportunity to paddle all the way down those remote shores, helped by a northerly breeze and a following sea.
First, bare hillsides of heather and rock dropping into the sea, then a big bay below the remains of Brochel Castle. South from here are the green slopes where Screapadal once stood, then cliffs rear up above steep woods, with huge tumbled blocks of rock. Progress on foot would be very slow with big detours round crags dropping into the sea, I paddled easily past, just a few yards from the shore, enjoying every yard of this remote and spectacular landscape.
A couple of miles on at a stony bay just short of the next point, I landed to explore Hallaig, a clearance village made famous by the poetry of Sorley MacLean.
He speaks of the empty settlement as if the people are still there:
“The men at their length on the grass,
At the gable of every house,
The girls a wood of birch trees,
Standing tall, with their heads bowed.”
Several hundred feet above the sea was a path, almost a road, contouring below the vertical crags, this used to be the route to Hallaig, passing the remains of an old stables then out through an overgrowth of birch to open, grassy hillsides with the scattered piled stones of former dwellings.
The flat top of Raasay’s highest hill, Dun Caan, rises above, to the north lies a strange scenery of rock towers. I carried on to a moorland top at 1000 feet with a view across the island then made my way back down, passing a monument cairn to Sorley MacLean with his poem in the original Gaelic and in translation.
IN improving weather, I paddled on south along gentler shores then crossed the Sound to a stony beach at the north of the rounded isle of Scalpay. The wind had dropped and the midges deterred me from an early camp in what otherwise would have been a delectable location.
So another few miles paddling to Sconser, a superb stretch of water with views in all directions up sea lochs bounded by cloud-capped mountains.
Hours later, after a fair bit of driving and a couple of miles’ walk, I found myself in the late evening at perhaps the most unusual bothy in Scotland. Perched on the top of a hill at the very northern tip of Skye, 300ft vertical cliffs dropping to the north almost from the door, a 360-degree panorama all round.
One of the few bothies visible from miles away, this little building was once a coastguard lookout and has been beautifully renovated to make a two-room shelter with bunks to sleep three – which was as well as a couple of women from Glenbrittle had just arrived ahead of me and were enjoying a glass of something alcoholic while admiring the phenomenal views before cooking a late meal.
There are no toilets at bothies and a notice requests that you first take a long walk from the building. In this case, it really should add “Do NOT walk north!”. The cliff edge is not fenced. Beyond, I could see a ferocious tide race almost like the Swilkie off Stroma. I’d need careful timing to paddle that the next day…
But I had my tide tables with me and it would be just right to do the trip round Rubha Hunish, the northernmost tip of Skye with slack water at lunch time. The seas around Skye can be ferocious but on the whole the waters are more sheltered and the tidal flows less severe than on my home ground.
If you train in the Pentland Firth, you can paddle anywhere. Indeed, it made an easy day, leaving the bike by Duntulm Castle and setting off in the kayak from the other side of the headland in light winds.
I wish I’d had the nerve to visit Eilean Trodday, just to the north, but was too scared of those tides – then found the trip a lot less daunting than Dunnet Head. Some of the high cliffs and bird colonies were just like at home! Highlights were basalt columns dropping into the sea, as in the famous Fingal’s Cave, and landing on steep-sided Tuim Island with dramatic views across to Duntulm Castle.
There’s really very little to see at Duntulm, yet the place is mobbed by tourists. Castle Sinclair Girnigoe in Caithness is much more interesting and spectacular.
I pedalled the few miles back to the car, dodging campervans and caravans, drove back for the boat then carried on to Uig for a night in the youth hostel with its amazing views out over the bay to the sunset. And, for the third time in three days, I met someone who knew me.
On Raasay a couple of kayakers whom I’d met on Orkney the year before had walked into the bothy, it was to carry on like that on Skye, proving the Highlands really are just an extended village!
