The Small Isles

[billplumtree]

Fri 3

Up at 7 to the alarm, after the usual gusty wind most of the night and another poor sleep.  The campsite on Rum is on the east side of the island at the head of a bay, so I'm hoping it'll be a bit more sheltered.  Ate breakfast, packed up, away by 9.  The grind up out of Cleadale was tough fully-loaded, but once done it was easy going for the whole of the 4 miles down the main road to Galmisdale and the ferry,


The Eigg road

Coffee at the cafe, phoned parents to confirm to them that I was still alive (and to me that they were likewise), and onto the punctual boat at 11.  There was an announcement over the tannoy to the effect that dolphins had escorted the boat into the harbour, so we might want to keep a lookout on the way out too.  Cue big rush to the bow...

A couple of dolphins did indeed turn up,


Shark!  Well, dolphin, actually

but they were distinctly camera-shy, unfortunately.  The crew on the boat got the best views from right out on the bow,


Calmac crew watching the dolphins

Still, a beautiful voyage in the accustomed fantastic weather, and all for the bargain price of £3.80.  Thanks, yet again, CalMac. 

So we headed back to Mallaig, there not being a ferry directly from Eigg to Rum today, and I had lunch (leek & tattie soup) onboard while in the harbour.  Overheard conversation in the cafe:

Boiler-suited CalMac engineer - "Have you finished the lambing and calving yet?"
Passenger - "Couple of ewes left.  You?"
BsCe - "Aye, just this week, thank god"

Lunch over, and a mug of tea out on deck as we approached Rum on a flat calm sea.  I'm not sure it gets much better than this.


Heading for Rum

I'd kept a book handy, seeing as going via Mallaig made this a 3 hour journey.  Complete waste of time, didn't even think about picking it up - and it was a good'un an'all.

[Ruthie]

Must ... not ... 

[Exit Stage Left]

Where's the perpetual cloud over Rum?

[billplumtree]

Where's the perpetual cloud over Rum?

Top right 

[sg37409]

Your photos are stunning Bill.  Really excellent. This is the 3rd time I've browsed through these

[eck]

Bill this is marvellous.  Thank you.

What yon Ruthie said ^. 

[Mrs Pingu]

Nice weather
Nice write up
Beautiful photies


Git ^multigit

[Exit Stage Left]

Where's the perpetual cloud over Rum?

Top right 

That's over Sleat!

[marcusjb]

I hope the tourist board have got you on commission.

Fantastic photos and really inspiring for a potential tour.

Enjoying your write ups enormously.

[billplumtree]

Fantastic photos and really inspiring for a potential tour.

Marcus, there are 5 miles of road on Eigg.  I've seen your trip reports.  You'd die of boredom.

[billplumtree]

That's over Sleat!

Nah mate, no way.  Definitely beyond Sleat and over northern Rum.  Absolutely.

[Peter]

Bill, I've just found time to give this the attention it deserves.  It's absolutely superb.  Thank you!  (Surprised and thrilled to get a mention!)

[TimC]

Another here who's been enthralled by the photos and commentary. Thank you, Bill!

[dme]

Great photography and interesting reading, thank you. 

[marcusjb]

Fantastic photos and really inspiring for a potential tour.

Marcus, there are 5 miles of road on Eigg.  I've seen your trip reports.  You'd die of boredom.

Not with that scenery!

[billplumtree]

So, Rum, then.  Well, not quite yet.  Ferry took ages to dock, couldn't seem to get quite close enough.  I dunno why, it was high tide or thereabouts, but the ramp kept falling short and ending up under 6" of water,


"Well, they'll just have to wade through it"

This went on for a good while, to the consternation of those of us supposed to be getting off,


"Surely the don't expect us to just wade through it?"

but we did eventually make it onto dry land without having to paddle.  It's half a mile along a rough track round the shore of the bay to the campsite, where there are also a few discreet pods in the trees and the new, stunning, hostel,


The new Kinloch hostel

- which is dead handy, as the hostel manager told me to feel free, seeing as it was quiet, to use the toilets and showers in the brand new building rather than walk up the track to the 'official' camping ones.  "Hostel" doesn't do it justice, it's like summat off that Grand Designs, with feature woodburner and floor-to-ceiling windows out onto the bay.  If the weather had been any less fantastic than it was I'd have booked in there like a shot.

But as it was, I was more than happy to camp.  And, on the campsite on the shore in front of the hostel, there were 3 other tents in various stages of being packed up.  One of the campers told me that they were leaving together on the next ferry (ie the one I'd just got off, after it had been to Canna and back), so rather than pitch I sat on a rock for a while and enjoyed the view.  I'm not as green as I'm cabbage-looking, you know!  After they left, I had a good look round and chose the best, only-just vacated, pitch for myself.
Tent up, I trundled off the further half-mile up the track along the shore, past Kinloch Castle (of which more later),


Kinloch Castle II

to the shop and picked up the usual supplies plus a bottle of Colonsay beer in lieu of going there (Colonsay, Islay and Jura were another possibility for this trip, but I decided their roads were far too long and well-developed).  Back to the tent then, to write up my diary, and this is what I wrote at the time:

So here I am, sat by my tent ten feet from the lapping sea in the hot sun, writing my diary.  There's just enough breeze to keep the midgies at bay;  a view back to Knoydart beyond the pier;  silence apart from the waves and the seabirds calling (my cuckoo seems not to have been assigned yet).  I'm drinking my beer and thinking, Where's the catch?  There's got to be one, surely?

Campsite, Kinloch, Rum.

I found the catch when the wind dropped for a few minutes.  Rum midgies have a particularly fearsome reputation, which I can now say is well-justified.  A head-net kept them away though, at some cost to the enjoyment of the view;  and the breeze shortly returned, having seemingly warned me not to take it for granted.  I didn't, and had my tea in comfortable breezy midgie-free peace, watching the Lochboisdale ferry head out on a calm sea and remembering being on it on just such an evening on my first Hebridean trip <mumble> years ago.  Happy days.

Tea over, I washed up at the best washing-up sink in the whole world ever, about 10 yards away


Washing-up sink, Kinloch campsite

and then had a quick spin down to the otter hide on the far side of the pier.  The otters were, indeed, hiding, and I saw nowt, but it was a lovely bit of singletrack through the woods to get there,


In the woods, Carn-an-dobhrain-Bhig, Rum

Back to the tent then, and just sit, soaking it all up.  Until the wind died down at 8 pm, when after the earlier lesson I knew exactly what to do and retired to the tent for the night.

Mileage: 8, or 12 with the offsideroad rule.

[billplumtree]

Sat 4

In the absence of hammer blasts of wind on the tent, I slept soundly and peacefully.  Until bladder pressure woke me, and the awful realisation dawned.  Oh Bill, you've let yourself down.  Stupid, fundamental, elementary cabbage-looking error:  no empty milk bottle, or anything similar.  I was going to have to get out of the tent...

I made sure I was covered as much as I could, including head net, but the ferocious little bastards were waiting for me, and they knew there was only one reason I'd be leaving the security of the tent at that time of morning.  It was horrific, it was carnage.  I dread to think how much blood I lost.  Not only that, but getting back into the tent again meant bringing, unavoidably, hundreds of the buggers with me on my clothes (mostly...).

The only effective way I found, and still highly inefficient at that, to decrease their number inside the tent was to lure them into one corner of the inner tent with my head torch and squash them against it with a tissue.  This got maybe a few per cent of them each time, so I asymptotically cleared the tent of 'em, the bloody streaks on the tent gradually becoming longer over the 20 minutes or so it took.  Had to be done, otherwise I had visions of my skeleton being found in the morning, stripped to the bone by the voracious bloody things.  And anyway, I used a different corner to last time I had to do the same thing, so I have distinct reminders of different memorable trips to Scotland.

That done, I returned to my lovely sound sleep, until 0730 when my newly-assigned cuckoo turned up and proceeded to make up for any lost time.  Well, it was time to get up anyway, as I was planning on joining the 10 am tour of the castle - there's only one a day, timed so that ferry passengers can make it, so I thought this one might be quiet, what with it being the early ferry an'all.  So breakfast, a luxurious power shower over at the hostel, and a wander up to the castle to join about half a dozen others and a stand-in guide (the usual guides working all hours on an inventory, apparently).  This was no loss: I'm sure we got more informal gossip from the stand-in about the goings-on of the aristocracy, the royal connections, infamously short kilts and butch ghillies...


Kinloch Castle I

Quick (and possibly biased) historical summary:  George Bullough, an Edwardian playboy, built Kinloch Castle.  Rum was, in its entirety, his plaything, he having inherited it along with the rest of his Victorian father George's fortune (made, in Accrington, from the automation of spinning looms).  George didn't like the colour of Rum sandstone, so had it imported from Annan instead; he had glasshouses built to keep alligators, so that he could eat alligator meat when he visited Rum for six weeks of the year.  Had tracks built so he could race his Bentley over the island.  On top of the everyday huntin' fishin' shootin'. You get the picture.  The island and, hence, the castle are owned by Scottish Natural Heritage.  SNH hate it, vehemently:  it's a money pit, costing millions to maintain, and it's Grade A listed so they have to - but it has no merit whatsoever other than its social significance, which really isn't what SNH do.

a monument to… colossal wealth and ego and acquisitive greed… It is a building without a redeeming feature.. a loathsome edifice. It perpetuates only the memory of the worst kind of island lairds… a hideous affront, but nothing that a good fire and subsequent demolition couldn’t rectify

That said, photographically it's an absolute bloomin' paradise...


Main hall gallery, Kinloch Castle


Dining room


Stags foot candlestick holders  Delightful, no?


Billiards room

In places, you can't move for dead animals stuffed and mounted,


Divers stuffed animals, Kinloch Castle

The Orchestrion, a whole-orchestra equivalent of a player piano, is reputedly one of only two working ones in the world, and was built for Queen Victoria.  It lives in a "cupboard under the stairs" the size of my house,


The orchestrion I


The orchestrion II

I could happily have spent all day in there.  As it was, our 45 minute tour ran, happily, to more like 90.  More than one of my co-tourists had indeed spent days there in the past.  A Swiss woman had stayed there, when the castle itself used to be the hostel.  Honestly, it really did.  She said they used to eat at that dining table, wander freely around the place - one reason an inventory is now needed...  And another bloke said his last visit had been 40-odd years earlier - as a ghillie, in rather different times.  A really interesting bunch. 

[SoreTween]

Wow! Stunning thank you Bill.

[arkle]

I think this is one of the most interesting threads I have ever seen on this forum. Thank you so much for creating it.

[billplumtree]

Castle visited, lunch eaten, and it was time.  Time for, believe it or not, a bike ride!  There are no roads whatsoever on Rum, not an inch of tarmac, but there's a total of about 11 miles of good 4x4 tracks that head up from Kinloch into the mountains and back down to the shores on the opposite sides of the island.  These are kept maintained by SNH, for use by red deer researchers and stalkers alike.  They were originally Sir George's Bentley tracks, and it is gratifying to report that they are now a cyclist's paradise:  very easily rideable, well-graded, traffic-free apart from maybe a land rover, and magnificent scenery in the heart of the mountains.

Having said that, the first mile out of Kinloch alongside the burn is a tad rocky and sandy in places, but don't let that put you off.  Once you leave the river behind and go through a gate, the going gets much easier and the surface better.


Looking back to Kinloch

Another mile or so further on, with around 100m of height gained, the track forks.  The left fork carries on climbing, for a good couple of miles, through the middle of the mountains to 250m, then descends to Harris bay on the west coast.  I was saving that one for tomorrow, it being the longer of the two.  I took the right fork, for the 3-mile brake-free freewheel down Kilmory Glen, with views across to Skye


Kilmory Glen, Skye beyond

There's a red deer research unit down at Kilmory, and as I was wandering down to the beach I found a deer hide.  Like the otters yesterday, the deer were indeed hiding apart from the odd one in the distance, standing on a crag and looking all deery;  so I carried on down to the wide sandy beach, with some interesting sandstone formations around


Folded sandstone, Kilmory


Folded and faulted, Kilmory

Climbing up behind that last one, I set off to walk back over the cliffs backing the beach, heading back to where I'd left Walter, only to find this little sweetie,


Red deer, Kilmory I

I don't think she was expecting visitors - she seemed a bit grumpy about being disturbed


Red deer, Kilmory III

so I took a couple more pics and left her to it.


Red deer, Kilmory IV

I found Walter, just where I'd abandoned him by the track, and headed back up the glen.  Comfortably in the middle ring, Walter could lap ths sort of stuff up all day long.  Glorious riding.  The descent into Kinloch was a bit more technical, but just as enjoyable, and I was back just in time for tea and shortbread at 4.30.  It had been a bit cloudy for most of the day, but the sun was out now and there was that gentle but vital breeze.  Just perfection, sitting there by the shore outside the tent.

I made the most of the breeze, and had an early tea in case it died down (it didn't, I needn't have worried.  That's the thing about perfection).  While I ate, I wondered why I hadn't seen any other bikes.  Ok, Walter's a sturdy chap who likes a bit of rough, but anyone on a half-sensible tourer would have a whale of a time on these short and hugely rewarding tracks.

Retired to my tent at 8.30 with Sarah Hall, before the midgies arrived.  Slept very well, best night yet.  There was no way, after last night, I would have been without the empty milk bottle;  I even felt a bit smug when I used it, that the wee bastards wouldn't be getting their teeth into me tonight.

Mileage: 10, 5 each way to Kilmory.  The surface was so good that I can't really invoke the offroad rule.

[peliroja]

Wonderful! What a beautiful deer. I'm really enjoying your journal, thank you.

[billplumtree]

Sun 5

Up by 8, once there was enough breeze.  It was a bit cloudy while I had breakfast, and almost verging on cool, but the forecast was good:  clearing, and warming up to 20C.  And, by the time I'd got myself ready, cloudy had improved to hazy, it was no longer anywhere near cool, and the loch looked like this:


Loch Scresort, Rum

I set off at 9.30 for Harris, with 2 water bottles and a full Camelbak:  at 13 km - each way - it was going to be a long day...

Off then, up the same beautifully-graded climb as yesterday, as far as the fork.  I rode alongside a walker, Nick, for a while on the steep section, where I wouldn't have gone much faster anyway, and we nattered away.  I tried to convince him of the ease, comfort and joy of riding, and he me of striding freely over the trackless hills.  We called it a draw, and I rode off ahead of him gracefully, effortlessly and speedily when the track levelled off a bit and made, irrefutably, my point.  At least, that's the way I saw it.

The climb steepened after the Kilmory fork, and the granny ring came into play a few times,  but the high point at 250 m was still reached very comfortably (are you listening, Nick?) in less than an hour, even with lots of photo stops.  From there, it's a magical 5 km descent all the way back to sea level, on a broad well-surfaced looping track.  First, the gentle shelf of Hugh's Brae,


The long and winding road

then, once round that shoulder, the track falls away steeply into Glen Duian and takes a huge great loop to the right as it contours away up round the glen;  finally, it plummets down into the glorious wide sweep of Harris bay.  Sheer joy. 


Harris, Rum

So, what's at Harris then?  Well, you can't really miss the Doric temple, can you?


The preposterous Bullough mausoleum I

Sir George's tribute to his father, who made him a vastly rich man, was to bury him in the preposterous Bullough mausoleum he had built here.  Later on, his tribute to himself was to join Pater here in his own tomb.  Ho hum. 

Harder to find, because Sir George had it blown up and buried, is the original mausoleum tribute, but a fragment of it is still visible,


The previous preposterous Bullough mausoleum

George had this one demolished after hearing one of his guests say it looked like a gents lavatory.  Personally, I can see their point.

[billplumtree]

What else is at Harris?  There's a shooting lodge - the white building.  Locked, unfortunately.  Peering in through the window, it's not exactly glamorous anyway, especially not once you've been in the castle,


Harris shooting lodge, Rum

There are Rum ponies, a native breed of highland pony, used by stalkers to carry deer off the hills,


Rum pony I


Rum pony II

and a bit scary if you're as unhorsey as I am.

And there's an amazing raised beach across the bay from the mausoleum/lodge/ponies,


Raised beach, Harris, Rum


Raised beach, Harris, Rum II

a good 30 m above and 100m behind the present beach.

There's tons of other stuff there as well, but I was hot and tired and hungry by this point, so I returned to the mausoleum (where I'd parked Walter) and had cheese and oatcakes in the shade of Sir George (he does have some use then). 


The preposterous Bullough mausoleum II

The shade was particularly welcome (not that the oatcakes weren't, obvs), since the thermometer on the outside north-facing wall of the shooting lodge read 23C at this stage.  While I was sat there, two people arrived on mountain bikes.  Cyclists!  The only other ones I'd seen, to date (or subsequently, as it turned out).  These two were the former ghillie from the castle visit, staying at the hostel, and his mate, on rented MTBs, visiting Harris for old times sake.  Unprompted by me, they swore at the ridiculous scar on the land that is the mausoleum.  What can you say?  they asked me, despairingly, and they seemed to find Preposterous acceptable as something you can say.

Late lunch over, I left them sitting on the clifftops having theirs, woke Walter up, and faced up to the 5 km 250 m climb back out.  As an average gradient that's nowt to write home about - but the first 200m are probably contained in a single 1 km or so, shortly after entering the windless depths of Glen Duian.  Having said that, a solid 30 mins of effort saw me to the top, even with good use made of Walter's 24x32 bottom gear.  That was the hardest effor I've put in on a bike for over 2 years now, and it didn't half feel good.  Oh, I enjoyed that!  I was being a tad cautious, and even stopped to measure my heart rate at one point when I realised that, with my cardiac history, the arse-end of nowhere on the remote side of a remote island off a remote bit of the mainland of northern Scotland probably isn't the best place for your first max heart rate test after a two year layoff...

From the top, a further good solid 30 minutes of idleness, virtually no effort at all, saw me back down at Kinloch and back to the tent again.  Water (I'd drank all I took), tea, bics;  luxury hostel power-shower;  more tea and bics.  Diary-writing in a reassuring, comfortable breeze off the sea under a cloudless sky.  My cuckoo calling, non-stop.  Bliss.

I nipped to the shop when it opened at 5, for tomorrow's milk, a 5-minute ride round the bay in flipflops.  Back for tea - rice pudding and fruit cocktail, 'cos I was on holiday and that's what I felt like having.  Wandered over to the hostel and chatted to the Swiss woman, reviewing our respective days - she hadn't walked the entire Rum Cuillin ridge, but certainly a big chunk of it.  I managed to introduce Preposterous to her english vocabulary.  Then sat reading until either the wind or the sun went down, whichever was the first, to a pleasant gentle musical accompaniment from a fellow-camper


Kinloch campsite, Rum

Mileage: 16, all offroad.  Woo-hoo!  How about that, eh?

[billplumtree]

Mon 6

Last day :-(  Had another good sleep, and woke to the warm sun on the tent at 7 but resisted until 7.30 when the midgies had mostly gone away.  There were quite a few boats on the loch this morning, the result (presumably) of a fine weekend.


Loch Scresort, sunny morning

Breakfast, sitting there in the sun by the shore, was disturbed by a surprisingly loud bark - well, more of a watery snort really - and there, watching me, was a seal just a few yards away.  It turned out to be just as camera-shy as t'other day's dolphin, unfortunately,


Seal! I

and the bloomin' thing retired to what it judged to be a safe distance after that rude interruption,


Seal! II

leaving me to return to my now-soggy muesli.  By the time I'd finished, it was even hotter than yesterday, so I took my time packing away and taking the tent down, then frittered the morning away drinking tea (having not packed the stove away - I'm no amateur, you know!), eating bics, nattering with the hostel-dwellers and taking photos.  Finally, I loaded Walter and rode the 10 minutes down to the pier, where I had lunch at noon prompt.  And a cup of tea.

Today's ferry route was Mallaig - Eigg - Rum - Canna - Rum - Eigg - Mallaig, so I could have caught it on the second visit at 3pm - but who's gonna turn down a (free!) 2 hour cruise around the N coast of Rum to Canna and back in absolutely perfect conditions?  Not me.  Nor many others - the boat was packed!  Conditions really were perfect, the views of Rum were hazy but magnificent.  I took the opportunity to take some pics of some of the folk I'd met.  This is the ghillie and his mate,


Fellow Rum visitors

(I'll leave you to guess which is which)

and the Swiss marathon walker,


Fellow Rum visitor

I really wish I'd taken one of Nick, on a week off from his family in urban Reading, playing to the full the part of Wild Man of the Mountains:  unshaven, unwashed and unchanged for a week ("But I sprayed a ton of deodorant on every morning"), and just bouncing with delight at the wonder of it all.

Canna, when we got there, looked... well, manicured, especially after Eigg and then Rum in particular.  Beautiful still, but less wild, so I had no regrets about not staying there this time round (though I was still thinking about getting off and staying for a couple of days, all the way until we actually docked at the pier).  I think I'd want to stay there before going on to Eigg or Rum, it wouldn't work (for me) t'other way round.

So back to Rum again, by the scenic route


Rum from the Eigg ferry

Calling at the pier in Loch Scresort again was quite amusing, somehow;  calling at Eigg again and seeing the cafe-bar and the shop was a bit weird.  I'd been out on deck the whole time, watching the scenery go by, but it seemed only right to go inside for the final leg back to Mallaig rather than watch Eigg recede into the distance.

And so into MLG and the usual Scotrail fiasco trying to get Walter booked onto the train for the following day.  I bagged a single room at the Steam Inn for not very much, had beer and pizza, and slept in a bed in a room with walls and a roof.

Mileage: 0.5

[billplumtree]

Tue 7

Home.  The end.