Skye Villages - Carbost

This is the Carbost with the distillery, not the Carbost near Portree. And, yes - Skye has a number of places which share the same name - it's an ancient Gaelic ploy designed to confuse the tourists.

So - Villages... Hmmm. On Skye, the locals refer to Portree as 'The Village'. It is the biggest settlement on Skye, and is commonly regarded as Skye's 'Capital'. With a resident population of about 2500, and a Gathering Hall rather than a Town House, the 'village' description is probably fair enough. Then we have Broadford (2nd biggest settlement - a spread-out sprawl of housing and a few shops) and Dunvegan (3rd biggest settlement - fewer shops than Broadford, but has a CASTLE).

After that, all other places are very small, and having grown as crofting communities, they tend to be spread over large areas, and are not clustered 'villages' as one might find in rural England or Wales. However, Carbost is an exception. It houses Skye's only whisky distillery, which at one time provided some local employment, and houses were built for its workers. (The distillery is nearly all automated now... there's barely any need for human intervention to make whisky these days). Carbost also has a pier, which was a calling point for the weekly puffer - a steam boat which once chugged around the Western Isles, collecting sheep for market and delivering coal for the kitchen range - as well as performing a thousand other vital services when road transport was very much less reliable than it is today.

Here are a few of my photos of Carbost as you might find it today...

Carbost War Memorial above Loch Harport

Carbost from the War Memorial

Distillery Row

Carbost Primary School. Built 1988,
and currently has 23 pupils on roll plus 6 in the nursery.

Carbost Shop - tiny, but packed with all of life's essentials!

Carbost Post Office
And yes - petrol may be bought here too!

Carbost Medical Centre

Distillery Cottages

Carbost Pier
I have just noticed that Cupar-the-Collie has managed to creep into this shot!

Talisker Distillery, Carbost

Skye's Sea Cliffs

A big part of the beauty of the landscape of the Isle of Skye can be attributed to the combination of moorland, mountains and water - ever-changing vistas of which appear around almost every bend in the road. Much of the water is the sea - Skye is deeply intersected by several large sea-lochs. Where land meets water, it is not unusual for the moors to end very abruptly, with un-fenced dizzying drops of as much as a thousand feet to the swirling sea below.

Bàch nan Gunnaichean, Trotternish, north Skye.
It's not just our western part of Skye which is awesome!

Biod Bàn (and Sue - if you look closely)

Descending Ramasaig Cliff -
it is steeper than it looks, and features a very rare section of fenced cliff edge

MacLeod's Maidens
The distant islands are Rum (bumpy) and Canna (flatter)

Waterstein Head and Neist Point from Gob na Hoe.
North Uist on the horizon.
Note the 'bump' in the finger of land that ends at Neist Point...
this is An t-Aigeach... To give a sense of scale, look at the next picture -

An t-Aigeach

Osgill Bay and Biod Bàn

Talisker Bay and Biod Ruadh

Towards Gob na Hoe

From Gob na Hoe

South east towards Idrigill Point