Skye day 5

The Old Man of Storr, a 3.8km walk lots of uphill, quite muddy in places, 1 hour and 15 minutes with no stops, it took us 2 hours with lots of picture taking and coffee stops

The Old Man of Storr is a single 50m high pinnacle, visible for miles around like a giant finger pointing sky wards. One legend says that the Old Man and his wife (who fell down so is no longer beside him) were turned to stone because they witnessed something that no human being should see.

Steve had set the alarm for 6am so we could get going and get on our way to the walk before the crowds descended. We had some cereal and made a flask of coffee before leaving just to keep us going and were going to have a bacon butty as reward after the walk. We set off about half six, the weather wasn’t too bad, a bit misty and cold but dry. The car park had one car in it when we got there so someone had started even earlier than us. We parked up and got ourselves ready, this time putting our wet walking gear stuff on before we set off. With camera round necks and rucksack on backs (well Steve did) we headed off. We couldn’t actually see the old man himself or the other pinnacles because of the mist.

The path from the car park goes up the hillside, this is the first uppage and quite steep, the path split after a while, but both paths lead to the same place according our instructions. The views are amazing from the off, in front is the mysterious pinnacles and behind overlooking the Sound Of Raasay. We went through a few wooden gates which are quite high and designed to keep deer out.  The path is easy enough to follow and is well worn, steep in places and as we got nearer to the top it got quite muddy, in some places the path is rough and rocky, but the views are well worth the scramble. As we got nearer, the pinnacles became clearer and the mist would clear every now and then. The pinnacles are an amazing site, and with the mist, very haunting.

The Old Man of Storr himself is an impressive sight and well worth the early morning and steep walk up, the sun had started to rise too over the sea behind us which was another amazing sight and made for some great photos. You can climb right up to The Old Man, but it looked like too much like mountaineering for us so we stayed at the bottom just taking it all in. We got our flask out and had a coffee just admiring what was around us, I can’t describe enough how fantastic this walk was, I would say it was up there with climbing Snowdon.

It had started to get busy as we made our way back down even though it was still early, we took the other path to go down once we had carefully managed the rocky, muddy bits, and the gravel path was a welcome sight. As we discussed the walk and still enjoying the views Steve's phone started to ping with loads of notifications, then mine started, it is so strange that through out our stay on Skye so far the phone signal is so hit and miss, more miss than hit, and yet half way down a mountain we both had full signal. My phone rang and it was my eldest son, I couldn’t believe we were up a mountain in the middle of nowhere talking to someone on a mobile phone, funny. By the time we got back down the signal had gone again. Another strange thing is that we saw 2 girls dressed to the nines pulling suitcases up the 1st bit of path which was really steep and if they intended to go all the way to the top they would probably still be doing it now, the things people do.

Evie was a welcome sight after the walk and we were glad to get our stuff off, especially our waterproof trousers as they were caked in mud and our boots were soaked. As it was still quite early we drove back to Kilt Rock before that car park got busy. It had started to get busy there too, but we found a parking space and went to see what the fuss was about, there was a viewing point from where you can see Mealt Falls spill over the cliff onto the shoreline below, well worth a fuss.

Our bacon butty was calling and it was only about tenish ,so we headed towards Staffin again and saw a sign for Staffin Slipway which was mentioned in my book so we headed down that road and omg what a stunning bit of coastline, the road to the slipway wasn’t too long and it was a stunning place, the views off the sea and the Red Cullins were brilliant, not a bad place for a bacon butty, in fact not a bad place to spend the morning and then surprise surprise we ended up staying all day and night, it was one of the best places we stayed and it was free. We had had a good walk, an early morning so it was a good decision made.

It was a lovely day just chilling, I read and Steve went off to take some photos, there were cars coming and going and also motorhomes, some left, but as it got later in the day, quite a few stayed, there was about 6/7 that stayed in the end. We had a lovely evening watching the sun go down and finally after watching a film we made our way up that weary ladder to bed