Day 7 - July 13

Today we were up early to catch a quick breakfast and then off to the ferry to Skye.  We drove down the scenic “B” road along the coast to Mairsaig.  Our tickets were pre-booked on-line so we simply drove into the car queue, picked up our tickets in the terminal, and then strolled around town for 15 minutes and picked up some food for lunch.  The ferry was a short 30 minutes so we stood on the top deck with the other passengers, and viewed the receding and oncoming shorelines.

Once on the Island, we made our way up to Broadford where we stopped for a coffee.  The landscape on the island is hard to describe and different than anything else we’ve experienced in Canada.  

So much rolling landscape and rock outcrops, scoured with flowing streams.  The costal roads wind and around the various inlets (Lochs) and rise and fall with no obvious reason.  The B roads are literally a car width dotted with “passing places” at strategic places to allow opposite traffic to pass.  This works quite well when the traffic is light, but the “places” are only long enough to hold 1 – 2 small cars, so when there is a convoy or opposing traffic 2 each, it gets quite dicey. 


After our coffee in Broadford, we made our way down a small road to our daily hike location.  We stopped and an old church ruin and graveyard to park. After looking through the ruins, we loaded up our packs and headed off through a field of cattle and sheep to join the main path.  


Our destination – Boreraig – a village destroyed in the mid 1850's ... more on that later.   The walk took us along the path of an old rail line and a quarry that mined Marble in the late 1800’s, but eventually shut down during WWI. 

There are fragments of marble scattered about as we walked past the main quarry and over the first ridge. We eventually passed through several fences through the walking gates, working our way up a total of 400’ straight south from our inland location to a the coast.  
We started to descend along a ravine which had many tributaries of small streams joining up. 

The main ravine widened and deepened as we got closer to the coast. Eventually we came down a steeper section where the landscape turned from grass to ferns. Here we saw our first glimpse of Boreraig.  Stone walls (3-4’ high) of the old buildings dotted the sloped area, roughly the size of a football field, all surrounded by stone wall.  




It was a rather eerie feeling standing among these ruins, thinking of the people that made their lives here – fishing, raising livestock, perhaps farming – and one day, their houses burned to the ground.

“The Cleared Coast” as it is known was brutally cleared by the British to make way for sheep farming and depress the Clan way life.  One day your living your life, and the next ... it's all gone.  




We took lunch in one of the buildings, sheltered from the wind but only for a short time, before the rain started.  Quickly we donned our rain gear, covered our packs and started our way back.  The rain was 
steady most of the way back ~ 90 minutes. Fortunately, it stopped as we returned to the car , which made it a bit easier getting in and arranging our wet gear.

We travelled on to find our accommodation at “The Old Inn” in Carbost; a small village on another Loch Harpost.   Dinner was at the pub – Mussels for Jenn, seared King Scallops for Glen – with Cider and Local Ale to wash it all down.  Fitting end to a rather wet afternoon. 

KM Hiked = 8.