Finding My Way on Skye

Someone said to me the other day that Skye has no beaches. He is a Harris man – an island which is fringed with wonderful white beaches – so he is biased. But he is broadly right, that Skye is mainly edged with cliffs, and the strands composed of rocks and pebbles. But today we drove up to what is called ‘The Coral Beach’, near Dunvegan – which is a beautiful white. It’s not, in fact, made of coral – nor is it made of sand. The white beach is composed of a zillion smashed up seashells. Pick up a handful and you can see larger and smaller fragments, some less than a grain of rice, but nothing as tiny as a grain of sand. Why do sea shells come here to die? I’ve no idea.

We have had a beautiful spell of sunny days this week, wonderful for April. The scene today offered a blue sky and a sea as blue and turquoise as if you were in the Indian Ocean. People who think it’s all shades of grey and green in the Hebrides haven’t visited; one meets with extraordinarily vivid colours in this landscape. And the water as clear as glass: one could see from the shore individual rocks on the sea bottom 20 or 30 feet out, and precisely where the weed grew and where not.

Quite a few people were deceived by the sunshine, the blue sky and the colour of the sea, into thinking they might be in the Med. I’ve been watching people strip off, straight down the beach, splash into the water… swear because it turns out to be [flippping] cold… and then they don’t stay long in the sea. No doubt very invigorating!

It’s nice to be here along with tourists – which is to say, sharing the space with people enjoying themselves. We found the same when we lived in Ely, in Cambridgeshire, which swarms with tourists and boaters in the summer; it lifts the mood, because others are having fun. We’ll see how we feel when we’ve been here a while, because some locals moan about the visitors (blocking up the roads and so forth). Susan was in a shop earlier today when somebody was complaining about tourists, but then they realized that Susan might be a tourist. They suggested she needs to find a greeting which flags that she lives here. Maybe so – but economically speaking, this island lives from tourism. It does not seem to me either wise or nice to choose to put oneself on the other side of a fence from visitors whose presence is necessary to our community.

A final picture – not a very good one – but the blobs on the beach are seals, sunbathing on a little island just off the beach.