Coll

With the weather looking fair and a few days free I set off for the Isle of Coll.

Looking north from ferry

Rum and Muck come into view

Towards Mull from Coll

Pint at the Isle of Coll hotel

Community Centre and Bunkhouse

Main Street in the evening

Gate

Camping in the walled garden in the south of the island

Collection on Friday? - will be tricky!

Wildflowers abound and I heard the corncrakes

Feall Bay

Feall beach

Shadowman was there!

Traigh nan Siolag in the far south

Crossapol Bay

info board

on top of Ben Hogh (highest point at 106m)

how did they do that?

ruins

Walking and reading

Loch Awe on the way home

Rum

Off we went on Friday evening, a drive up to Mallaig and a broken night's sleep in the backpacker's hostel. An early start:

 

Then the ferry across.

A two and a half hour hike with all the gear round to Dibidil. The peaks of Askival and Hallival looking down on us:

Then a quick lunch and just the essentials for the climb up Sgurr nan Gillean, Eigg across the water and the bothy far below:

At the summit 764m up:

Sorley with Ainshval and Askival in the background:

Jamie on the ridge to Ainshval 781m:

A well-earned drink back at Dibidil where we met up with some crazy walkers who had done all the tops from Kinloch with their full packs (including some coal!) and arrived after dark:

What a night in a bothy can do to you:

Glorious sunrise the next morning:

Then we walked the 12 miles of rough going round the coast via Papadil:

 and Harris:

to reach Guirdil:

 

Another night spent here in the lee of Bloodstone Hill and more strange goings on:

This time a lovely sunset over Canna:

Shadowman was on hand of course:

 And his strange companion:

Then back to Kinloch and a slap-up lunch at the village hall. Phonebox still there:

Taking the early train to Inverness and then the bus  to Skye I got the ferry across to Raasay and arrived at Grant's house in time for a late lunch:

Grant's House

We then set out along the single track road with only the locals for company:

Nadia and Sorley

Sorley and Grant

 From the road we walked along a gorge to Hallaig, made famous in Sorley Mclean's poem of that name:

Time, the deer, is in Hallaig Wood
There's a board nailed across the window
I looked through to see the west
And my love is a birch forever
By Hallaig Stream, at her tryst
Between Inver and Milk Hollow,
somewhere around Baile-chuirn,
A flickering birch, a hazel,
A trim, straight sapling rowan.
In Screapadal, where my people
Hail from, the seed and breed
Of Hector Mor and Norman
By the banks of the stream are a wood.
To-night the pine-cocks crowing
On Cnoc an Ra, there above,
And the trees standing tall in moonlight -
They are not the wood I love.
I will wait for the birches to move,
The wood to come up past the cairn
Until it has veiled the mountain
Down from Beinn na Lice in shade.
If it doesn't, I'll go to Hallaig,
To the sabbath of the dead,
Down to where each departed
Generation has gathered.
Hallaig is where they survive,
All the MacLeans and MacLeads
Who were there in the time of Mac Gille Chaluim:
The dead have been seen alive,
The men at their length on the grass
At the gable of every house,
The girls a wood of birch trees
Standing tall, with their heads bowed.
Between The Leac and Fearns
The road is plush with moss
And the girls in a noiseless procession
Going to Clachan as always
And coming boack from Clachan
And Suisnish, their land of the living,
Still lightsome and unheartbroken,
Their stories only beginning.
From Fearns Burn to the raised beach
Showing clear in the shrouded hills
There are only girls congregating,
Endlessly walking along
Back through the gloaming to Hallaig
Through the vivid speechless air,
Pouring down the steep slopes,
Their laughter misting my ear
And their beauty a glaze on my heart.
Then as the kyles go dim
And the sun sets behind Dun Cana
Love's loaded gun will take aim.
It will bring down the lightheaded deer
As he sniffs the grass round the wallsteads
And his eye will freeze: while I live,
His blood won't be traced in the woods.

It's a beautiful and haunting place. We walked though the birch wood and had our picnic in the ruins of the township:

Dun Caan from Hallaig

Grant and Barkley looking to the mainland

Then back to the house with it's views of Glamaig:

Shadowfriends

on the beach

On the beach with Skye behind

Glamaig and ferry terminal

Monkey puzzle!?

 Then the next day back on the ferry (soon to be replaced with the world's first hybrid ferry), bus and train. I will be back...