Sorry, would it be better if I titled each post with where I’ve been, or just the date?
Skye. 19th-21st June.
I know, that’s why I’m not going to do dates, it will just show up my laziness in keeping the blog up to date, but in my defence I have been doing lots of other things, most of which were more rewarding than sitting at a computer, so tough.
You’ll remember no doubt (Over the sea to see you know where if you don’t) that last year I had formed a view of Skye which was something of a curate’s egg: on the one hand, wild and undeniably beautiful; on the other, overrun by tourists in campervans and/or well-heeled foodies. Another benefit of a bonus year is that not only can I go back to favourite places, I can give other places a second chance, and since I would be passing Skye on my way to explore further north, it seemed churlish in the extreme not to give it another go. I think that’s probably enough charity: after two more visits my view remains that it is probably best appreciated from a distance, or perhaps on a postcard or an episode of Coast, because, whilst full of delightful, friendly people who can apparently cook excellent food for their visitors, it is also full of tourists and campervans.
Isle Ornsay was my first stop. I know, I went there last year but there were two good reasons for going back: first, it would be a very safe place in the big southerly that was forecast; and second, in addition to two swanky hotels with swankier restaurants it has a well-reviewed hotel-with-pub in which I fancied joining in with the locals to watch their football team save their Euro bacon by thumping the Swiss. You can see the plan unravelling already, but at the time it was a good plan perfectly executed: an early start from Muck let me show off with the spinnaker all the way past Eigg and Mallaig into the Sound of Sleat, then expertly drop it exactly one minute before the wind went up to 20 knots (yes, I did see it coming actually, for once) and half an hour later drop the anchor in the best sheltered spot in front of the pub just before it went up to 30 knots.
I felt I’d earned that pint and the venison burger I wouldn’t have to cook myself as I dinghied ashore later, looking forward to some jolly banter with the locals.
No chance of that. The bar was rammed, but there were only two locals: both were serving and one of them was English. One table appeared to come from Newcastle, everyone else was loudly American. Taking pity on me shuffling around with my beer and wondering whether I’d have to go back to the boat to eat, two American ladies invited me to join their table. This was actually rather a treat and I use the word ‘ladies’ quite correctly with regard to American tourists: they were from Philadelphia and on a seemingly upmarket coach tour which would take them to see all of Scotland in eight days. Given that they had spent three of the eight in Glasgow, and two of them in the art galleries, you get the picture. I tried to, as they engaged me in heated debate-cum-lecture about why the Colourists were so superior to the Glasgow Boys, illustrated with liberal references to their iPhones which appeared to have hundreds of shots of the same picture from a range of angles, “so you can see what I mean about the brushwork” my hosts enthused. I did wonder what they were going to make of Skye, and indeed the rest of the Highlands, but I needn’t have worried: they had driven to the hotel that afternoon and were due in Fort William for lunch the next day, so there wouldn’t be much time to regret the lack of world class art.
Somehow I managed to turn the conversation to a subject closer to my heart as it turned out they were perplexed about the different classifications of tea (their itinerary seemed to include lots of fancy teas in big hotels) so I was able to return the debate-cum-lecture favour with an erudite exposition of the differences between Tea, Afternoon Tea, Cream Tea and High Tea. They looked relieved when the dinner gong went (sadly metaphorically, it would have enhanced the hotel experience) and they all moved through to the restaurant leaving me with my venison burger and the Geordies.
Eventually two actual Scottish locals joined their friend behind the bar and brought a laptop with the football but that hardly improved the atmosphere: there was a brief spell of excitement when Scotland scored, but that only lasted a few minutes until the inevitable equaliser, so I decided to beat a retreat before the heavens opened (that was my excuse).
Next day I briefly saw the upside of the campervans: I was now in the land of no yacht facilities to speak of, but the wonderful Cruising Association app had local knowledge of showers in a campsite a mile up the road. Given that I had to wait for the tide, it seemed a good opportunity so off I trotted into the wilderness. Round a corner, in the middle of nowhere, was something resembling a posh motorway services with a big campervan park around it, along with everything a campervan might need by way of food and drink in the shop, and showers that would rival a good marina. I felt compelled to buy some local cheese but was disappointed to get back and find that it came – inexplicably – from Kintyre.
Never mind, on up through the Sound of Sleat past Glenelg and the little ferry that so entertained me last year. Ever-entertaining, as I approached the narrows I heard the big fishing boat ahead call him up on the VHF wondering if the ferry was about to cross in front. “Oh no,” replied the ferryman, “you’re alright there. They’re just cleaning the pier so I’m sitting out here waiting.” This seemed a truly odd arrangement to me, but I suspect even more so to the cars queued up on the road leading down to the slip.
And so, weaving past Kyle of Localsh and under the bridge and round the odd islands that bend the wind so that it’s always on the nose, on up to Portree, which styles itself the capital of Skye, and perhaps it is, but I doubt that’s official. I’d read fairly dismissive reports of how it’s not great for yachts, being surprisingly exposed, rather scruffy and full of tweed shops. I found this hard to believe as it looks a lot like Tobermory which is none of these things, but I was wrong. I picked up what looked like a sheltered visitors’ buoy but the wind changed in the night and kicked up a nasty swell. Next morning I went ashore and found a considerably scruffier version of Tobermory where there were no facilities at all for visiting sailors, but an awful lot of cafés and shops selling tweed and other highland souvenirs. Fresh fish? A butcher selling Skye venison? A shower for someone who had just paid £20 for a visitors’ buoy? Even cheese from Kintyre? Apparently not.
Even though it’s the size of a smallish village Portree calls itself a town and has an elaborate one-way system, and I soon realised why: there was a constant stream of coaches, campervans and 4x4s pouring through and around, disgorging piles of tourists with selfie sticks and little sense of road safety onto pavements a lot narrower than those in Dallas or Mumbai or Osaka. Many of the cafés and restaurants even had pictures of the food outside, as if we were in Venice or Bangkok, except that they were mainly of fish and chips. None of your lobster, langoustines or sourdough here.
Deciding that downtown Portree had little that I needed, let alone liked, beyond a Co-op, I headed for a walk to the outskirts round the bay by where the boat was. There were nice views, some very smart houses and a cheerful sailing club whose younger members had been out having fun racing round the moorings the night before, but none of these things were enough to make up for the fact that the time it took to walk there and back was exactly the time it took for the heavens to open, so I got soaked heading back to the boat, where I spent the rest of the day and the night watching the rain come down in sheets, wondering if tourists were still clambering off buses in the downpour to record their visit with selfies.
And that was Skye, take two. Deciding that I now had enough data to demonstrate that it is definitively full of tourists, campervans and over-priced restaurants, I headed north to the remote shores of Wester Ross and Sutherland, where there would be none of those things. Or so I thought.
Blue Moon's trip around the UK 
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