All points west!

Up early the next day for a morning ride round the other side of the loch. The part of me that needs to ride a different way back was going to be frustrated – this is a sea loch, and there’s no way to go all the way round it without a boat. But I did manage to find a nice bit of mountain biking trail on the way back, which I took with some alacrity as I realised I may not have left enough time to get to the train.

I needn’t have worried. Plenty of time to get to the station and then off on another adventure into mountains moors and lochs, This is scenery so stunning that you can’t afford to miss a moment. I was only a little distracted by the family with a slightly nervous huskie who needed a little bit of fuss so she felt better about being on a train.. This is a world of single track railways and tiny stations, of deep, dark forests falling away from railway lines that cling to hillsides in defiance of gravity. This is a world of railway viaducts that the Hogwarts Express would have thundered over, of grass only just hanging on the rock and stone. This is a world of towering hills, of peaty rivers and mossy banks.  A world where buzzards soar above it all, and red deer explode from the brush to hurtle across the moorland. This is a world that defies description, but can only be truly understood in person.

And that brought me to Mallaig. I could have rushed straight onto the ferry, but instead I opted for a little jaunt round the village, whose only real existence, beyond some fishing boats, is as the ferry terminus for Skye.

And forty-five minutes after leaving Mallaig I was in Armadale on the Isle of Skye.. and another dream was coming true. Just another 25km and a couple of steep climbs later, and I was in a youth hostel in Broadford, my home for three nights. Where, much to my surprise, and, it has to be said, the embarrassment of the proprietor, the fish and chip shop (in a fishing village) had run out of haddock.

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