Day 52: Portree - Staffin and the Old Man of Storr

I am a good painter of the decorating variety, as well as the mural and stage set, so I spent the morning giving the guest room at Harish and Clemencia’s home a coat of fresh paint. She had already done two coats to cover the original deep purple but it was still ‘grinning.’ Not only was it June 21^st today – the longest day but it also happened to be Harish’s birthday.

We had a celebration lunch with family members then on his advice I drove to look at their biggest town, the capital of Skye Portree. 

For those of you living in Sussex near me – it was the sixe of Polegate! Big town? It had a Co-op supermarket and a Boots and several small shops including a soap maker.

And Skye Batik, a kind of throw back to the sixties. 

The designs were Celtic but most of the Batik is made in Sri Lanka even though the family live here. The coloured jackets and smocks are made on the island.

For some reason they have a joke collection written up on luggage labels presumably by the public

and even more oddly, a whole wall of graffiti in the form of messages and autographs again from the public.. They gave me a pen and invited me to sign the wall. Somewhat bemusedly I did.

I have already noticed that almost every building on the west coast and on Skye is painted white, Portree harbour was the exception. There were some colour washed houses.

An architect service in the town supplies very modern wooden prefabricated residential and commercial buildings, and I had seen some on my road trip over the last few hours including some wooden ‘tent like’ holiday structures.

Leaving Portree I drove through the countryside to Staffin. Again, bar an isolated house or two, it was an empty landscape grey and silver in the rain.

The attraction here was Kilt Cliffs, dark sheer cliffs with a waterfall where in the past dinosaur bones had been discovered.

We have Beachy Head in Eastbourne. Frankly my dears just as impressive!

Then I heard it. I thought it was pure imagination but as I stood in the rain looking over the barrier at the cliffs there was the most eerie music. A cross between hump back whales singing and dolphin sounds.

The other tourists were too busy talking and taking selfies to notice, but a German came to stand beside me and I asked him if he could hear it too. After a moment or two he agreed and set about trying to work out where on earth it was coming from. Being German, and careful and methodical, it only took him a minute of two.

The barriers themselves.

They were not set in a straight line but slightly offset.

At the top of each tubular strut was a small hole about half a centimetre in diameter. We were high up on top of the rocks and as the wind blew, it went into the tubes through the holes like bellows forcing air into organ pipes and that made the sounds. It was quite magical. I loved it. It was an air organ and I have absolutely no idea if it was intentional, but I will definitely share the concept with members of my council so we can set something similar up in Eastbourne. We have enough wind!!!

I dove back past the Old Man of Storr a distinctive  rock formation that looked extremely dramatic in the mist and low cloud swirling around it.

In contrast to the lower more rounded hills on the island, there is nothing gentle about this. It looked as if it had been designed as a Martian stage set.

I was back at Treaslane in time to meet up with my hosts. I had suggested taking Harish out for supper to celebrate his birthday, and he chose the Stein Inn. It was in Stein, and is the oldest inn on the island.

A lot of the food I have come across so far has been of the fast food variety but this was not. It was truly delicious.

On our return, well fed and satisfied with the day, we cracked open a bottle of champagne and chatted til the early hours. This had been the longest day. It will be down-hill to winter from now on.