A View of the Skye
Easter Sunday roast, tender stems, and poppin' hills
Friday’s much anticipated and appreciated ferry from the Isle of Harris to the Isle of Skye arrived late (but we were thrilled it arrived at all due to all the recent government drama) and transported us with a faint hint of a sky-moon view on a smooth, late-evening crossing. After waving a sad goodbye to Tarbert, I had the CalMac-and-cheese for dinner sans peas and watched an episode of Vera.
The Isle of Skye is the home to many beautiful and strange things, one of which is the Fairy Glen, a geological landslide formation located in the middle of sheep grazing farmland in the township of Uig. Each year it is my ritual to visit it - usually on a day trip via ferry from Tarbert to Uig and back the same day. This year, I am remaining in Uig for a few days due to the prematurity of my arrival in response to the limited sailing of the aforementioned ferry. On my first day here, I set out with walking stick on a clear morning.
Unacknowledged by the council government which refuses to designate it with any signage other than the one posted on the highway that says, “Strictly No Tour Buses,” they did manage to acknowledge the ever-increasing tourism and subsequent damage from cars parking on the side of the road by putting in a parking lot in 2020. (I blame the Fairy Glen Facebook Page, and so should you.)
I visited the Fairy Glen on my very first trip to Scotland in May of 2001. You remember pre-9/11 - when your mother could sit and wait with you at the terminal gate, quizzing you on what you packed. That year was all about visiting Skye and seeing Dunvegan Castle, the seat of the MacLeod clan chieftain, where he and his family live from October through March each year. A friend who had lived in Edinburgh for many years loaned me a travel book titled “Strange Places to Visit in Scotland” or something like that. When I boarded that bus from Portree twenty-five years ago, I asked the driver to let me off at the Fairy Glen and he had no idea what I was talking about. He did end up dropping me at the correct entrance road from the highway, where that “Strictly No Tour Buses” sign now lives, and quipped “Be back in two hours or you will spend the night in the Fairy Glen.”
After walking for about a mile or so down the now pothole-riddled road, otherworldly conical-shaped ridged hills popped out of the landscape. And then the tourists start popping out. Don’t go on a Saturday…
What is stranger than the sheep-infested, ridged hills surrounded by randomly scattered stone walls, clustered Rowan trees, and red toadstools, is the abrupt start and stop of it all - it covers merely a half square mile of farmland.
Later that day, my friend Angus prepared a Sunday roast for us to share, along with a side of broccolini and roasted potatoes. When I said, “Let’s have some broccolini with the roast” he looked at me quizzically. They call it “tender stems” here in the UK. Precious.
Playlist: Landslide
Titanic Trivia:
Safety Wanted, Not Luxury
Mr. Walter Winans, the millionaire sportsman, expresses himself sensibly on the disaster, “Does it not seem strange, charging a passenger 870 pounds for the best stateroom on the Titanic,” he writes to the Daily Mirror, “and not giving him a private lifeboat? I am sure it would pay better than giving him a lot of useless decoration. By the way, the Titans defied the Gods and were thrown into the sea, so it was a bad-omened name to give a ship.”
Blessings & Love,
