Uig Bay – after the weather improves
We spend a couple more days in Portree on some final errands, including getting Nettle’s annual MOT check sorted, then it’s time for a change of scene. We’re only headed to another caravan park — a cheaper one! — as we’ve still got some things to do before we’re ready to enter travel mode again.
It’s been a windy week, and today we watch the wind fling the rain horizontally across the camp ground, and claw at the few hapless tents. Feeling grateful that we’ve solid walls, and a slightly more comfortable means of transport than the damp cyclists we eye with sympathy on our way out, we set off northwards, up the Trotternish Peninsula. Still, the wind takes us by surprise on the more exposed sections and buffets us around alarmingly as we crawl along cautiously. The rain has filled up the streams and lochs to bursting point, and water gushes merrily down the hillsides.
We reach our destination about 30 minutes down the road, pull into the deserted caravan park, and find ourselves a place out of the wind. Out comes the wifi antenna, only to find my research led us a bum steer — not a sniff of Interwebs to be had here. Back into the breach: onwards we must go!
Readjusting our GPS to the next contender, on the other side of the peninsula, we set out again to circumnavigate the north of Trotternish. The rain casts a grey veil down on the landscape so that we catch just tantalising glimpses of mountains and crags — we don’t mind, though, as we know we’ll be coming back this way later.
In the howling wind and rain, the isolated crofters’ (that’s fancy Highlander for “farmers”) cottages look bleak and very lonely. It feels a bit like we’re at the edge of the world, or centuries back in time. Or perhaps that’s just the prolonged absence of 3G Internet reception talking.
We round the tip of the peninsula, and the wind and rain ebb. We find ourselves winding down a switchbacked road high above a picturesque bay, edged with craggy cliffs — Uig, our destination, a sleepy proto-village with a fuel station, a pub/restaurant, a ferry port, a little camping site, and little else. The spot for motorhomes is nothing fancy, but there’s wifi within reach of our antenna, bagpipe music plays in the bathrooms, and apparently we can get fish and chips from the restaurant down the road.
We settle in for the week.
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