Over The Hill

Day 8 - Our final day of Skye 2015 dawned with clear blue skies and a strong breeze blowing the tents as we broke camp and packed everything into the big yellow van. With a long drive ahead later in the day, we were looking to finish our walk by mid-afternoon at the latest; and Alan had the ideal solution, right outside the campsite sits the Corbett of Sgurr an Airgid, a 5 to 6 hour day, that would suit us fine.

Just along the road from the campsite stands a magnificent war memorial carved from solid granite commemorating those men from the Clan Macrae who were killed in the First World War, and along side this, is the thousand year old (Ref: macrae.org - The Unveiling Ceremony of The Clan Macrae War Memorial - 15th July 1922) burial ground of Clan Macrae, both of which are steeped in history and well worth a visit for anyone passing this spot on the way to Skye, as we have done previously; and today we parked alongside the memorial and took to the hillside via the kissing-gate on the opposite side of the road and started the long climb up through the trees and bracken.

Just above the 150m height, this track merges with the old stalkers track and continues to twist and wind its way up the steep hillside and through the heather in great sweeps, where at times anyone ahead of you may only a few metres higher up the hillside, but quite some distance ahead as you still have to contour along the hillside before making yet another twist and turn to gain more height, a true stalkers path.

Notably as we progressed, the wind was beginning to grow in strength, and by the time we had reached the bealach of Mam na Dubharaiche at 582m, it was taking us some considerable effort to make good headway against the frequent gusts. Nevertheless, we pushed on, after all, this was an "easy" Corbett, and we had less than 300m of climb ahead of us before we reached the summit at 841m.

Across the flatter area of the bealach, the ridge rises steadily upwards through broken rocky outcrops before it finally reaches the flat summit plateau, by which time we were having real difficulty standing in some very ferocious gust, getting those poses on the summit cairn was quite an accomplishment without someone falling down! But we had made it, maybe not an "easy" Corbett, but a lovely little hill despite the wind.

A quick exploration of the summit area, and a few hundred metres to the western minor top and we soon found a reasonably wind free rocky shelter in which to have ourselves some lunch, after which we simply reversed our route for the return, mindful of our long drive home.

A nice end to a wonderful weeks walking in Skye and Kintail.