Day 5 – Kilmore to Portree (76 miles)

While in Mallaig, I had booked ahead at the Flora McDonald Hostel, and for the price of a standard room, I was lucky enough to have a private room to myself. One of the advantages of hostelling at this time of year was that there were few others daft enough to be out, so in three nights' hostelling out of four, I had a room to myself. None was as luxurious as the one at the Flora MacDonald, though, with an en suite bathroom and a TV.

I had my earliest start of the week - on the road by 8.30 ish. It was calm, warm, sunny, and I could see more of the mainland from the island than I had seen of the mainland the day before. As I rode along the A851, a couple of lads who had been staying at the hostel beeped and waved as they drove past. They were sea canoeists, paddling around the coasts of the island, and the thought of fighting against the waves and wind for a whole day made me glad to be on a bike.

Knock Castle


The road clung to the coast for about ten miles, and the bulk of the island protected me from the headwind which had been my lot the whole way from Perth. I picked up the headwind again when the road turned inland up a long drag, where I had my first ducking of the day. The rain tended to follow the same pattern, where blue skies gave way to grey, then came the first tendrils of rain, gentle enough that you might be tempted to ignore it, and I did ignore it the first couple of times, and by the time I realised how heavy the rain was, it was past time to put on my jacket and gloves (or take off my jeans if I was wearing them), and I was wet through, or at least unpleasantly damp. By now, I recognised the signs of rain, so I had my jeans off before the worst of the rain came in.

Broadford was a disappointment – there was very little there, and after my fruitless search for a cafe, I decided to go self-catering for a while, so I stocked up at the Co-Op (I developed a taste for Co-Op brand Melton Mowbray-style pork pies in particular), and sat at the picnic bench outside the tourist information office. I was back there again the next day, and I'm not sure what the staff made of a scruffy touring cyclist with a camping knife tucking into bread and inch-thick slabs of cheese inbetween rain showers.

The island was stunning, if not what I expected. I wasn't wholly aware of it until I arrived, but I had been expecting a lush green paradise of deep, tree-lined valleys and towering crags, rather like the Lake District. But Skye is barren. The main island road, the A87, curves around the stark Cuillin Hills, which resemble a moonscape, bare rock and scrub grass above the cold waters of the loch. While I was riding alongside the loch, I could see a couple of HGVs grinding up the long climb at the centre of the island, without even a tree to block my view, only the rain and murk. Water poured off the hillsides in impromptu waterfalls which were gone the next day.

After climbing the gentle, but typically long, slope I had another soaking on the descent into Sligachan. By then, I was inured to the conditions, so I didn’t even stop at the Sligachan Hotel, location of a famous yearly running race up Black Cuillin. I wanted to get as far as I could that day, and the weather looked clearer up ahead.

The new and old bridges at Sligachan


Marsco and the Red Hills


After I took the turning onto the A863, the conditions for cycling were the best I had all week. The road was hilly with long sweeping curves, and finally a view of the Atlantic past the rocks and breakers. It was only a pity that it didn't hug the coast too closely at the southern end, though it did at the northern end, after the turning to the Talisker distillery. I nearly went to visit the distillery, but I was determined to fit as much cycling into the day while the weather was relatively fine. I saw a couple of lads riding in the other direction, and felt terribly overdressed, since they were casually pootling along in jeans and t-shirts, compared to my approach of skin-tight lycra. I spoke to them later, since we were staying at the same hostel in Portree, and they said it was the third day they had been on the island, and it was the first time they had been out of Portree, so foul had the weather been.

All aboard the Justice Bus!


Finally, after four and a half days of slogging into a headwind, when I turned eastwards near Dunvegan and crossed the bulk of the island, the wind became a tailwind, wafting me to Portree, and my bed for the night at the Portree Independent Backpackers. The headwind had become a noise that I couldn't until it stopped, and when it did stop, for a few miles it felt as though I was floating.

There was a group of French students staying at the hostel, who were a little stand-offish, but two of them were the same lads I'd seen earlier in the day cycling to the Talisker distillery, and while I was cooking my beans on toast, they told me how unhappy they were with their teachers who had organised the trip. I think their expectations of Skye had been similar to mine, except more so, and they were having difficulty with the cold climate and the isolation. They were moving to Edinburgh the next day, though, which would be more to their tastes. They gave me the impression that the local pubs were a bit insular, as I found out when I had a pint in the Tongadale Hotel, but only the one, since it was full of surly blokes chewing down fish and chips and complaining about the weather.