Loch Coruisk

Declared by David Attenborough no less to be one of the best views in the UK, and it's hard to disagree. The Cuillin rises up above and around Loch Coruisk in menacing fashion, providing a fantastic backdrop to the end of our walk there from Elgol. The walk itself also has to be one of the best in the country, with fabulous views all the way, and a really interesting, snaking path to follow, taking in boggy moorland, tree corridors, pebbly beaches, sandy beaches, and huge slabs of rock (and no little danger it seems).

Perhaps the most famous slab of rock is not long before the end of the walk, a massive volcanic shoulder with a diagonal crack running down it called the 'Bad Step'. It has a fearsome reputation, and apparently numerous people have fallen into the water below (which as long as you don't crack your head on a submerged rock would simply mean a swim round the bottom of the rock). This is the second time we've traversed the step now, and I have to say I'm not sure the reputation is all that warranted (though it looks harder going in the opposite direction). Mind you, once across and walked a little further round the shore a large group started to cross (the ONLY other people we saw in the entire 4 hours or so walking) and one of the six was finding the going particularly difficult (the other 5, similarly to us, virtually skipped over).

Loch Coruisk itself was as fantastic as ever, not that everyone saw that. There are regular boat trips to the Loch from Elgol (indeed we had space booked on a boat to come back) which deposit tourists to take the walk round the Loch, or simply bask in the majesty of the view. When we first arrived we seemed to have caught it in between boats, with only a few other walkers about. And then from nowhere (well... from over the crest where the mooring steps are) came dozens of people. By now we'd found a seat high up on some gabbro (the sticky volcanic rock that forms the Cuillin) and watched it unfold. Photo ops were taken by some (I'm still not entirely sure why she'd taken her handbag on the trip from a tiny village to a secluded mountainous loch); while others stopped in a small beach, swamping it with people where a family of five or six had been relaxing/throwing stones into the water, at least 100 yards before the view opens out; stranger still when we made our way down and to the boat, by the very short river from whence flows the Loch, where a couple of women, with a couple of young children, one of whom was wading in the water with a fishing net shouting about the fact from inside his Chelsea football shirt, with the young girl shouting about not yet having been in the water on their hour long trip which was about to end.

We hadn't seen them coming round to see the view. They had simply paid the cash (probably around £60 in total, possibly slightly more) for the kids to walk in a river for 45 minutes or so. Brighton beach come to Loch Coruisk. It's not as if a thousand other places around the island can have you doing that without the cost of a boat trip. Although maybe the boat trip was more of the purpose and the seals seen en route, with the stop to wade a mere side-aspect and no desire to take in the view.

And stranger still was the couple who had made it around 100 yards off the boat, finding a slab of rock on which to lie down, take in the sun, and have a snooze together. Now that is definitely something you could do at any number of places on the island (and more peacefully without boats depositing visitors to walk a few yards from your dozing heads).

I've come to an unscientific conclusion - while the island has definitely got busier over the last 7 years that we've been coming, the majority of the greater numbers coming are not here for the 'outdoors' in its own right. On walking routes and out of the way places we've not found the numbers growing significantly (indeed on a couple of walks which we've done before there have been less other people. Where the numbers have gone up is in places where access is relatively easy. Coruisk feels isolated, but a fun 40 minute boat ride gets you right in there, with half those taking that ride not then venturing far enough (about 15 minutes walk at most) to see the real beauty of the place. Fairy Glen is a 5 minute diversion off the main road to Uig, and the road runs right through the middle of it - park in a passing place, step out of the car and you're in the movie set.

A wealth of visitors coming to truly indulge in the best Skye has to offer would see an Aviemore-esque explosion of outdoors stores which simply isn't the case (we know of two on the island ? though it has to be said, with mountain railways and the like, the Cairngorms has more than its fair share of cocooned 'wilderness'). I'm happy that people are coming, and will hopefully take back good memories of the island. But I just feel that they're missing out on something fundamental that this place has to offer - that simple peace, relaxation and solitude. The main reasons we keep coming back year after year.

Anyway, embarrassing moment of the day came on boarding the boat when pretty much everyone onboard was informed that I'd have to go to the booking office when we got off because my bank card, used over the phone to pay, had been declined twice. Turns out the number had been taken down incorrectly (the phone line was dodgy when I called to book), but a group of strangers now know me as a debt-ridden money-pit...

Shattered we headed out to a fine meal at the Old School Restaurant in Dunvegan (seriously, go, best mussels I've had in a long time) before chasing a sunset which never quite fully burst into life back to the cottage.

Tomorrow is our last full day.... :(

Cloudy Rays