Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ternish Peninsula, threading the long wavy step of land between the sea cliffs to the east
and the chaotically sundered escarpment complex of towers, tilted ridges, pinnacles, cliffs
and ravines rising to the west.
Descending fractionally after the first gentle ascent out of Portree, the view opens out
to display the great spearhead rock that is the Old Man of Store standing precariously
proud of the broken wave of rock behind, all of it poised over a slope of brindled forest
and the twinned lochs Fada and Leathan. The sea cliffs to our right are best seen from
the air or sea; a monumental fringe of ragged verticals and extreme slopes, riven with
boulder-jumbled clefts, dotted with natural arches, pocked with caves and studded with
rocks and a very few tiny islands. The best place to see the cliffs from land is at the car
park where the short stream from Loch Mealt plunges over the rim rock towards the sea.
The only slightly fancifully named Kilt Rock to the north displays its pleats of Middle
Jurassic sedimentary rock to the wide expanse of breeze-ruffled sea leading to the hills of
Wester Ross.
At Brogaig a perfect prince among GWRs heads due west out of that part of the long,
straggled settlement that is Staffin and darts straight towards the cliffs of the Quiraing,
curling its way across the rising slope of moor past rock formations with names like The
Table, The Needle and The Prison before throwing itself upwards into the chaos of rock
like a salmon leaping a torrent, zig-zagging up the broken face of the tumbled cliffs with a
briefly tortuous Alpinicity only outshone by the Bealach-na Bo road to Applecross. Even
that famous road struggles to match the sheer spectacle at the summit pass here; the view
falls away in green folds of grass intagliated with burns and long lightning-path fissures
in the peat, punctuated by unkiltered broken castles of rock and blue roundels of lochs be-
fore pausing at the dotted houses near the main road and then reaching out to the shining
pale void of distant sea and the hazy frame of mainland mountains far beyond.
Blimey, I love this road and this view. The only time I had to use the Skye Bridge
was when I was giving Dave a lift to the court in Portree one winter to renew the pub's li-
cense. The ferries don't run then, so I'd had no choice about using the bridge. It did mean
that while McCartney went besuited to renew the Clachan's licence, I got to drive up here
in the Drambuie 911 beneath a fine clear winter's sky, encountering drifts and streaks of
snow towards the summit and a breath-sucking, eye-wateringly cold north-easterly wind
when I got out at the top to take in the view. Probably shirt-sleeves wasn't that sensible
either, even for me.
The time I saw the Pass of the Cattle at its best was, oddly enough, when there was
a lot of cloud. I'd come to Dornie for a couple of days, arriving in the late evening. I'd
persuaded Dave we should head as quickly as possible for Applecross and try to catch
the sunset, but then - as we drove out of Ken's old stamping ground of Lochcarron -
the cloud started to thicken to the west above us, and by the time we were swinging up
