Isle of Skye - Day 9
I sneakily set the alarm clock a bit earlier this morning without telling Claire. I was hoping that the weather I would be as good when we got up as it was when we went to bed. And it was! I could see all the mountain tops peeping over the trees, with a background of blue sky. After a boiled egg, and some marmalade on fried toast, we drove round the mountains to our start point for today's walk - the Hotel Sligachan, which is at sea level, so makes any mountain walk much more of a challenge straight away.
We managed to squeeze George into a car park full of badly parked cars, and one badly parked tour bus, and were soon on our way up our first Munro of the trip. In fact, it was Claire's first Munro ever, and (I think), only my second. The mountain was called Sgurr nan Gillean, and, much to my annoyance, was the only mountain we could see with it's head in the clouds.
It was about 11am when we got started (after we'd turned round because we were going up a path on the wrong mountain :0), so we both wanted lunch quite soon. I was adamant that we needed to put a bit more mountain beneath us before we had our lunch break. So we walked past the inviting pools in the river (nearly as nice as the Fairy Pools, but not quite), over the scary footbridge (two planks of wood), and started the upward slog up the mountain. It was tough going as there was a lot of scree, and big loose rocks as well. We eventually had our lunch about 2/3 of the way up, by which time we were absolutely starving.
It didn't get any easier after lunch. I remember saying "I'm not looking forward to coming down", and it turned out we were on an easy bit then! We eventually reached the crest of the ridge leading up to the summit. By this point we were in the clouds, and were uncertain whether to carry on or not. We were concerned we wouldn't be able to find our way down if the cloud came down further, although I had been paying a lot more attention than usual for that very reason. I wanted to go up. I felt like I'd invested too much effort in the mountain not to, even if I couldn't see a thing when I got up there. Claire was uncertain, and at that point, two blokes appeared out of the cloud (coincidentally, they are now sitting behind us in the bar).
I asked them if we had far to go, and they told us about 150m, straight up. About 25 minutes. They looked at us slightly doubtfully and asked how we were at scrambling. They told us that the key to gaining the summit was a big slab of rock just before, which was the most difficult part, although there were lots of hand holds. After that, I just decided we were going up, and fortunately Claire followed me!
The slab of rock did turn out to be quite tough going, but, it turned out, that it was not the key to the summit at all. Getting to the actual summit took me 3 tries. After the big slab of rock was a ridge about a metre wide and 10 metres long at the most. Sounds like child's play, but when you've got jelly legs from the climb, the wind's blowing, and there's a massive drop on each side, it becomes like a tight rope over Niagara Falls.
I eventually realised that it would be a whole lot easier if I took my rucksack off, and after that I skipped across the little ridge as if it wasn't there. The summit itself was tiny, and I couldn't see a thing for the clouds. But the sense of achievement made up for it. The photo above is stolen from Google (obviously, as there is a view in the background!). It shows the the tight rope ridge viewed from the summit.
Getting down the mountain wasn't as hard as I was expecting, although we were both exhausted when we finally got back to George. The scree slopes seemed easier, and less scary to negotiate downwards. We stopped briefly for a flapjack on the way down, but we skipped the tea, as time was getting on, and we were keen to get in the pub.
This photo was taken from the Sligachan hotel a couple of days later, when the clouds had finally lifted:
We are staying at the Sligachan camp site tonight, which is just over the road from the hotel and bar. We have never been so relieved to have a shower. We both felt absolutely filthy, which is no wonder, as today has been quite a sweaty day, and aside from our dip yesterday, it's been 3 days since our last shower. The showers were hot, and had unlimited hot water, but even so, we were still in the bar 15 minutes earlier than we thought we would be.
We've both had venison stew (again), and are just waiting for our crumble to arrive. Our feet are killing us, and we have both got our shoes off under the table. Tomorrow we are going to do as little walking as possible, although we will have to walk into a food shop at some point, as supplies are running dangerously low.
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Location:Isle of Skye
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