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A bank holiday weekend was the perfect excuse to take an extra day off and explore the wonder of the Isle of Skye. Two nights at a B&B near Dunvegan, and one at a hostel in Uig on the Trotternish Peninsula.

We began our lovely weekend with a romantic lunch at the highly-acclaimed Three Chimneys restaurant. We first heard about the Three Chimneys when the head chef was named in the top four chefs in Scotland a couple of months ago.

Then it was off to Dunvegan to find our B&B. Imagine our delight when we checked out the view!

That’s the other guests’ car parked out front, I couldn’t resist taking a photo of it. It’s a 2-year-old Morgan, built to original technology. Cool huh. Oh but the view, those there mountains are the McLeod’s Tables.

The B&B at Dunvegan was the perfect base for us to drive to Sligachan (pronounced sligga-han) to catch the scary buses to Elgol, to start our 21km walk back to the car at the Sligachan Hotel. I can’t seem to find an explanation of the walk on the net (we got it from the book Nicola gave us for Christmas, and it combines three shorter walks into one), so I’ll have to guide you through it myself.

First we started where the bus dropped us off at the pier in Elgol, which meant we first had to walk up to the top of the hill to where the walk started.

The views were amazing right from the start. That’s me on the way to Camasunary, with Sgurr Na Stri by my head, “come on Wes, stop taking photos, we haven’t even properly started yet – we’ll never get to Sligachan at this rate!” :)

The first 2 hour section ends at Camasunary, where you have the option of a 2 hour direct walk to Sligachan along the valley floor, or 6 hours via Loch Coruisk and the ‘problematic for some’ Bad Step – that’s a quote from the guide books, not us. Obviously we weren’t taking the direct route.

The photo above was taken at the start of the difficult slab section to skirt around Sgurr Na Stri, with a few rather exposed slab shuffles, of which the Bad Step is the final (and most difficult).

Looking back at the Bad Step, it’s hard to see what the problem was. But it’s that lump of grey rock with no green to walk on. It involved about two metres of shuffling along a narrow ledge with only small handholds, followed by a diagonal drop onto a boulder underneath, which you couldn’t see while you were dropping, and holding on with one hand. The danger is just a splash about 8m down into the water. Considering we had such amazing weather all weekend, getting wet wasn’t quite the risk we are sure it normally is.

Wes enjoying the break after the interesting experience getting past the Bad Step. Let’s go to the Loch!

Another 2 hours and our first view of the beautiful Loch Coruisk comes into view with the start of the Black Cuillin behind. Surely it’s time for lunch?

That’s the view across Loch Coruisk to the Cuillin (pronounced coolin) Range from our picnic rug.

That’s the halfway point done, only 4 hours to go!

The next bit was the hike up the ridge to the highest point of the walk, perhaps 400m.

That’s Wes on the way back down the ridge. The peak on the right is Sgurr Hain, with Ruadh Stac behind and left of it.

Ok so way way in the distance there you can’t even see our destination, past Ruadh Stac. But we know it’s there, so off we trod.

We are almost there, this is the view back to the ridge which hides the Loch where we had lunch.

As we approached Sligachan and looked over at Sgurr Mhairi, we saw this sign – shall we go back?!

It was 9pm and when we went to the pub to order our fish and chips, Wes discovered he’d lost his wallet somewhere along the way. Not a good end to a very exhausting day.

After a well-earned rest, Sunday dawned – another bright and sunny day! What is going on? The Isle of Skye is named from an old Norse word ‘sky’ meaning ‘cloud’, and the weather is meant to be highly changeable, mainly cloudy, with constant drizzle. Taking advantage of the fabulous weather, and on the B&B hosts’ advice, we went out to the Neist Point lighthouse to check out the birds.

Funnily enough, you can’t even see the lighthouse in that photo! Well, if you follow the path, you eventually reach it, right out on the headland. We saw kittywakes, razorbills, a gannet, guillemots and puffins! Many firsts for our bird-nerd notebook. Ok off to the hostel for a relaxing evening watching the sunset from our hostel, admittedly it didn’t set until 10.30pm. By cool coincidence, the hostel was run by a couple from Ballina and it was great talking to them. Almost as good as talking to our real parents (but not quite).

What an amazing, fun-filled weekend! But we never recovered the wallet, it didn’t seem to matter how many times we rang the bus company, or how many police stations we reported it at. Oh well. Here’s a list of wildlife we saw in no particular order:

• Roe deer
• Red deer
• Frog
• Rabbits
• A seal
• Butterflies
• Midges :)
• Loads of new birds for our list: cuckoo, thrush, swallow, house martin, wheatear

We haven’t bagged any munros yet, our plans for a second day vertical hike were hampered by my persistent dodgy right knee syndrome (must have that looked at). But we’re already planning our next hike on Skye – bagging a 1000m munro from the Cullin Range! Or perhaps the Cairngorms… hmmm… choices…