Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Adventures in Skye


Portree, Uig, Dunvegan

When I woke up the next morning, the rain had stopped and the cow was still mooing. I packed up my stuff, headed back to the road, and watched the bus to portree drive past me as I walked to the bus stop. Turns out that if I had stuck my hand out the bus would likely have stopped because it's a rural road, but I didn't know that. So I walked to the visitors center for the castle I had passed the day before, asked the guy in the garden shop lots of questions, and sat out front waiting for the bus.

I took the bus to broadford, with the intention of exploring. It had not yet sunk in how tiny all of the places in Skye are. I was dropped off in front of the co-operative grocery store, and bought supplies. And then I had a quick walk around, and realized there was nothing to see here, and that I would be best continuing to Portree. So I got on the next bus, but didn't have enough money. I was going to wait for the next bus, but the driver took all the change I had and told me to get on. Then, when I got off the bus he handed me a ticket and change. I gave him a funny look and he said he had just put me into the system as getting onto the bus at a later point on the route. And so he was giving me change! It was one of those moments that reaffirmed for me the kindness of strangers.

Portree is nice enough, although their main square has been turned into the island bus station. The town is very cute, and full of cute shops and resturants. I visited the Skye Batik store, where they told me to put my pack down and handed me coffee. Reading the information sheet, skye batiks had originally been produced in skye, but because it took so long for things to dry, people were buying their batiked items wet and taking them home to dry. So they moved the opperation to Sri Lanka. Being a good world citizen, I wanted to make sure they treated their workers okay. I asked, and the guy told me it was his wife and her family working. "I wanted to exploit them" he joked, "but my wife wouldn't let me." Probably makes for happier workers if they get to sit in the sun, than working with fabric that refuses to dry in skye.

I wandered down to the harbor, where one couple was fishing, and wandered around the rest of the place. And then got on the 3:30 bus to Uig (apparently pronounced ooig). The first stop was the Portree High School, where I discovered that although this bus was public transport on the surface, it was actually a school bus. It was soon filled with uniformed kids aged 12 to 16 or 17, and, sitting there with my big backpack, my now green hair tied up in a scarf, I was something to be ignored. Evesdropping on their conversations, it made me glad to have finished high school.

I ended up getting off the bus at the Quaraing. The lady at the batik shop told me it had an amazing view, so once again I found myself hiking up a large hill with my heavy pack. The view was indeed amazing, although it would have been better if it was less misty. I thought that scotland in general was a green place, but Skye can make there rest of scotland look practically brown. As I was standing at the top pondering the walk down, an older man walked down from the ridge to where I was standing, and asked me if I'd like a lift down to the road. The same woman in the batik store had told me that hitchhiking was an acceptable method of transit on skye, especially on roads where buses did not run, so I accepted his offer. He told me that he had walked to the Quaraing. Apparently it's actually a rock formation, inside of which is absolutely flat. I couldn't have walked it that day, however, because by the time I was on the ridge, it had been covered in fog. He and his wife were English, but came up to Skye every year for holiday. He also told me that the cattle auction had started the day before, and most calves were being sold. The reason for the all night mooing suddenly became very clear - this mother had lost her child.


Back down at the bottom I waited for the last bus of the day. While I waited I went down to the sea side, and was passed by a group of cattle. Back on the road, I watched as this group of cattle ran up and down the road, followed by guys in small farm vehicles. After about the fourth time, I asked one guy if this was cow exercise day. No, he told me. We're separating out the mothers from the young. They had already put one calf in a separate pen, and it's running mother kept trying to escape the group to go to her calf.

It turns out the bus I was waiting for was only going to go half of the remaining distance to uig before it stopped for the night, but the driver did let me on, and then I stood by the road and watched as he parked his bus and went home. With no good camping area nearby, I did something that will frighten my mother, and stuck out my thumb. After about 20 minutes a car stopped. The guy told me eventually he would be going to uig, but he was taking the long way. A minute later another car stopped. It was a german couple, also going to uig. They rearranged their stuff, and managed to fit me into the car.

I asked the guy if he had trouble driving on the left, and he said now. Not that it was a problem on this particular road, as it was a single track road. His wife was on sheep spotting duty though, and kept yelling sheep, sheep. She was a doctor and he was an engineer, and they had hired a car to explore scotland for a couple weeks. As we came to the west side of the island, the sunset was absolutely spectacular, and so they pulled over to take photos. They drove me all the way to the camping site at uig, I thanked them, and then they sped off to find a B and B.

The camp site wasn't exciting. Uig wasn't exciting. It was getting dark, and I set up my tent, made dinner, and then visited the pub, which like the pub the day before, was empty. Determined to find some life I walked past the pier where the ferries to the outer hebridies depart from, and back toward the main road to portree. The only sign of life I found was two boy playing with a ball in the middle of the road. I turned around, went back to my tent, and slept.

Waking up to another cloudy but dry day, I visited the Skye brewery, tried this drink called kyte, which is microbrewed ginger beer with 1% alcohol. Mine was also made with tayberries, so it was tayberry kyte. And then I caught the bus back to Portree. My plan was to go to Dunvegan, but there wasn't a bus for three hours, which would have put me in Dunvegan too late to see anything. And so I tried the hitchhiking thing. Walking to the edge of town, standing next to the post office, I waited. But everyone kept pointing to the post office. I found out later that I could have gotten a lift with a postman if I had asked. But I didn't know.

And so I started walking. Half an hour later, a car with two old men stopped and offered me a lift. They had seen me walking when they drove into town as well. The guy who was driving, told me that he is a crofter with 80 cattle and 200 sheep. His friend works as the gardener for a hotel out in the middle of nowhere, and so the guy takes his friend into town once a week so he can buy groceries. He told me how there used to be grocery vans. One company would come by on a monday, another on a wednesday and another on a friday. Nowdays, he doesn't even bother to milk his cows anymore, he just buys milk at the grocery store. And people don't want to live in the country anymore. They are going to build lots of new council houses up at portree. People want to live in town.

He let me off on the road to Dunvegan, and I tried my luck one last time. 20 minutes later a car came toward me and stopped. I was a bit confused, until they explained to me that they were going to Dunvegan, but there had been a police car behind them and they couldn't stop. So they had turned around to come back and get me. I got to sit in the back with my pack and their very friendly black lab named Jake. They were surprised to see me hitchhiking, saying that when they were young they had done it all the time but now things were different. I said that I had been told it was okay on Skye, but wouldn't do it anywhere else. The woman had been in the brittish equivalent of the peace corps, and they both had some good stories. They gave me a ride all the way to Dunvegan, showed me the campsite, and then let me off in the center of town.

At tourist information the woman advised me not to wild camp, and so I walked back the direction I had just been, to the campsite, put up my tent in the wind, and walked back into town to have a look at the castle. The castle at Dunvegan is the McLeod clan's. It looks impressive from the outside, but sadly, they redecorated at the end of the 18th century, and the inside is a bit too frilly for my taste. The history bit was interesting, and the gardens were very nice. And it was my first castle of this journey, so it seemed about time, as I had been in scotland over two months. And I had a camera epifany in the gardens.

Checking in both pubs, I came to the conclusion that perhaps bars are alive during weekends on Skye, but every pub is empty during weekdays. I returned to my tent, cooked my emergency ramen noodles, chatted to the guy running the campsite, who turned out to be a postman. He told me there used to be postbuses on Skye, but they had decomissioned the last one this summer. And then I spent my last night in the tent.

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