The purpose of this blog is to publish some of our pictures of the Isle of Skye, Scotland. We lay no claim to these being great photographs - they are just pictures of what we see, taken with ordinary compact cameras. We hope you enjoy browsing.

Richard and Sue


(CLICK ANY PICTURE TO VIEW A FULL-SIZE GALLERY)


Saturday 19 November 2016

Skye Falls

Being a hilly place with lots of rain, one can reasonably expect Skye to have a large number of rivers. As it happens, because Skye isn't all that big, and mostly slopes quite steeply, the natural drainage tends to take the form of many small gushing streams (called burns here) rather than wide lazy rivers. At times of heavy rainfall, water levels can rise quickly and dramatically. Here, as an example, are two pictures of our local burn (which is actually called a river...) taken from about the same vantage point...

Roskhill River - at a trickle...
... and in spate
Often, the burns cascade over exposed bedrock and 'rapids', and some occasionally plunge over precipices in the form of waterfalls. Some of Skye's most dramatic waterfalls occur at the coast, where burns throw themselves over the cliffs to the sea below. These can be even more dramatic in a storm when the wind blowing the falling water back over the clifftop creates an upside-down waterfall! Unfortunately, most of the coastal falls can only be seen from afar, or from the sea itself. The majority of our inland falls are relatively small affairs. Here's a few from my photo archive...

River Logasdal - and some of the best coastal scenery on Skye - Duirinish
Allt Mhicheil, Duirinish - would look amazing when in spate!
Allt Mainnir nan Gobhar, Waternish
Over the Edge - I am standing IN the burn at the top of a cascade into the sea below

Dibidal River, Duirinish

Dibidal River reaches the sea

Red Burn, Greshornish
Ramasaig Bay
Allt Coir' a' Mhadaidh - Skye's infamous Fairy Pools river
At 80 feet - Skye's highest inland fall - Eas Mor, in Allt Coire na Banachdich

Tuesday 8 November 2016

NW Skye's Beaches

Friends on holiday in Cornwall have recently sent me a couple of photos of their walks on beautiful sandy beaches. That set me thinking - about beaches on Skye...  Well, in spite of Skye having a very long coastline, we have very few sandy beaches here. In places, especially in the north of the island, the land ends abruptly at a sheer cliff (the highest clifftops on Skye tower some 1000 feet above the water below). In most other places, the shore is rocky and inhospitable - not an easy place for a leisurely stroll.

I have searched my photo collection and come up with pictures of some of the beaches in our local area...

Bharcasaig - a small beach of black basalt sand at low tide
Coral Beach at Claigan.
The beach is not sand or coral - it is actually a material called maerl -
dead fragments of a hard seaweed, crushed by the waves and bleached by the sun
Diubaig - a dramatic but difficult-to-get-to beach of black basalt pebbles
Galtrigill - a small, rocky and almost-never-visited beach on Loch Dunvegan
Flat bare rock at Greep
SAND! (but only at low tide) - shore of Loch Losait, near Gillen
Ramasaig Bay - another rocky shore
Un-named beach of rocks and pebbles near Trumpan