Day 2 We had a good peaceful night and woke up fairly early to rain on the roof, it was a very damp morning, we had breakfast and started to tidy up, put everything away and get ready for our next destination, this was our first encounter with the midges that you hear about in Scotland, we are usually lucky, but today we weren’t, I went to the loo and to have a wash, I opened the window in the small bathroom and oh my god, before I realised there was a swarm of them in the bathroom, I got bitten to death before shutting the window and had to spray them with air freshener as that’s all we had, they also homed in on Steve when he went to put the gas off and get the wildlife camera in, which disappointingly didn’t have anything on it when we looked, they don’t seem to bite Steve like they do with me, not sure why, but I was covered, it was the best conditions for the midges to be around, damp and being in a wooded area. We had had a cup of tea and decided to stop on route for some breakfast.
This was going to be our first walk, it was to The Point of Sleat, it’s the most southern point on Skye with a modern lighthouse and some fantastic views looking out to the small islands of Rum, Canna and Eigg, well that’s how it’s described. On Map my Walk it was 4.63 miles and with stops it took us 3 and a half hours. 🙂 We drove to Amardale which is where the road to the start of the walk went from, Amardale is a small village and a ferry port it has some gift shops, a pottery a campsite, woodland walks that are way marked from the petrol station, a studio/shop, castle gardens and ruins, a museum and various places to eat.
As we still hadn’t had breakfast we decided to get a bacon sandwich from a tiny restaurant / take-away called The Shed, there was no room inside as it is like I said tiny, but popular for the views you can look at, we got our butty’s and sat in Evie to eat them, they were quite expensive for a bacon bap and a hotdog bap, which I was hoping was going to be a proper sausage but sadly was as it said on the tin a hotdog sausage. We had a smooch around the gift shop there and got 2 lovely mug mats as I call them or coasters, plus the all-important fridge magnet.
We had a chat with the shop owner and she was saying that it had been quite a quiet summer, compared to what it usually is, she thought it was something to do with Brexit, she asked us our plans and we told her we were heading to The Point of Sleat, she said the views were amazing, with that we got back in Evie and headed off.
The car park was about a 10min drive from Amardale at the end of a single track road and it is an extended farm yard, we just had to hope there was room, it was still early so we had a good chance that there was space. We drove along a very narrow road going up above the sea and it was at a very high point on some rocks that’s we saw our very first sea eagle, Steve saw it on some rocks and at first we didn’t know what it was as it wasn’t close, it was massive, Steve said it was the size of a goat, I grabbed the camera (I will never learn to have that camera on my knee at all times when in Scotland), luckily I managed to get some shots of it on the rocks and some more as it flew off, it was amazing to see and it was one of many we saw by the end of our trip.
We carried on to the car park and the beginning of the walk. We got kitted up and with camera in hands and rucksack on back, well Steve had the rucksack as usual, we made some coffee in a flask to have on a stop. The walk started well, it was a rough road though some moorland, it was up and down and quite steep hills at times, we followed this road for a good distance, the last hill we went up was the first sight of a white sandy beach, little did we know the hard work we had to get to it. At the bottom of that hill there was a signpost to the left, it was a steep and rocky and so muddy in places, it soon levelled of along a fence, it was even muddier, you couldn’t avoid the mud at all and it was quite slippery in places, we just had to watch were we were walking and stopping to look at the views.
Surprisingly there were quite a lot of houses around considering it was so remote and out of the way, a little girl had put a freeze box on the path with a sign saying her name and she was collecting money for a yacht trip she was taking ,the sign said to help yourself to butty’s and cold drinks for just a small donation, I opened the box hoping to find a butty we could have, but the box was just full of water, it was obviously there for when it had been busy in the summer, there was still a jar there with some money in, so Steve put a couple of quid in it, hopefully she made enough for her trip.
The path drops into a small valley with the beach now in front of us and close, there is a path down to the beach, it is a gorgeous beach with white sand, blue sea and views to die for, it is called Camas Daraich beach. We stopped and had a coffee here, there was a seal out to sea not to close to the shore but close enough to see him, and he was on his own and stayed bobbing about all the time we were there. It was a lovely break and we enjoyed our coffee, our walking boots were covered in mud by this time and were soaked though, it’s just one of those thinks you have to put up with if there has been a lot of rain, it wasn’t worth changing our socks as they would have got just as wet.
We left the beach, headed back to path and came back to the point where we had to head up again, this path again is rough and muddy and fairly steep, we were now above the beach, the views again are stunning, the path heading now towards the lighthouse is very muddy and very very wet, at the highest point of this hill we could see the actual point with the lighthouse.
It was at this point we decided not to go any further, the path was a steep down and a rocky climb up the other side to the lighthouse, it was just too wet for us and we had the walk back to do back though all that mud, so we found a small rock to sit on and just enjoyed the peace, the views and another coffee, it was lovely just to sit and enjoy. We headed back after about half an hour or so, it seemed along walk back to Evie for some reason, the path back down to the rough road was hard going and as we were going down it was slippy and we both ended up on our backsides at some point on that walk.
It is lovely to see Evie in the distance on a tough but enjoyable walk, everything was muddy, and thank goodness we had our waterproof leggings on. It had taken us a good 3 and a half hours so we were ready for some lunch. On the way into Amardale we had passed some great laybys with some fantastic views over to Mallaig, so we decided to park up in one of these and have lunch, after having lunch and a cuppa we discussed where we were going to stay that night, what better place we said than where we were, so that is what we did. The road again wasn’t too busy and was very quiet after about tea time, it was a lovely stop and the views over the sea changed all the time with the light and the weather.
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