We loosed our moorings at Tobermory before breakfast to sail for Skye, a dramatic passage through the Small Isles and past the most westerly point on the British mainland at Ardnamurchan, with its Egyptian inspired lighthouse. Rafts of Manx shearwaters were in evidence and several bottle-nosed dolphins. Our final berthing was at Kyle of Lochalsh.
After lunch most of us visited Plockton, a fishing village created at the time of the Highland Clearances to provide alternative employment for families evicted from the land by the local landowner who, like so many of his peers, was replacing his tenants with more profitable sheep. The fishery eventually flourished with the herring but declined rapidly when the herring were fished out. Today, the village is an up-market holiday destination with a reputation for good food and simple but charming accommodation. It was ideal place for a Sunday stroll.
Next stop was Eilean Donan, probably the most photographed castle in Scotland. Its familiarity derives from numerous encounters from film sets to chocolate boxes. In its current form it dates from the opening decades of the 12th century and is thus representative of a Scottish Revival style that evolved alongside the arts and crafts movement. Originally the site of a Celtic anchorite’s cell, the castle name means Donan’s Isle, from the name of the sixth-century saint. It was rebuilt by a descendant of the McCrae clan whose castle ruin it was and inaugurated in the 1920s. The situation is incomparable with a natural tidal moat and mock mediaeval causeway; a photographer’s heaven.
Meanwhile a still energetic few crossed the new bridge over to the Isle of Skye. Already some 20 years old, the bridge did not become widely used until the Scottish parliament, in one of its first independent acts, abolished tolls that were widely seen as extortionate. On Skye, we hiked in the Cuillins in fine conditions.
Returning to the ship for the Captain’s Farewell Dinner, we were able to digest our haggis at an on-board folk music session after dinner with Frances Wilkins on concertina and Ronan Martin on fiddle.
