In the past year I've become a fairly good hiker. I can walk for miles, "relieve" myself in the outdoors (although I try to avoid it as much as possible), I know what to wear and what to pack to carry for a day. But the idea of actually sleeping out in the wild. . .ummm. . .no. I will gaze at the stars and then return to comfort. I enjoy hiking because I like overcoming what I always felt were my physical limitations.
I was the reader rather than the doer when I was younger. And I still love to read--although reading books has been taking a back seat to the Internet for the past couple of years. But now I feel, well, more able to handle life because of the hiking. I figure, like flying, if I can overcome my fear of getting lost, of falling off a cliff, of not being able to complete the hike, then I am stronger than I assumed. And if I'm stronger than I assumed about that, maybe I am stronger than I assumed about other things as well.
But to get back to the "no water" situation on Eigg. The pump was fixed by 8:30 a.m. and we had a wonderful hot breakfast presented to us at 9 a.m. I love Scottish porridge; I've eaten it daily since I've been in Scotland. The Swiss couple were leaving Eigg so we said good-bye to them at breakfast. The Dutch couple was going to hike up to the Sgurr of Eigg; Eigg's cliff. This is the Sgurr; I took a photo of it as we left the farm.
An Sgurr is what is called a monadnock or inselberg, a knob or hill that rises up on its own. It looks a bit like a butte too. It was formed millions of years ago from lava. It's not a volcano though, not even an extinct one. The climb up to An Sgurr is steep and on a grey day it can be quite forbidding. So I decided that the Singing Sands hike sounded easier and more cheerful. The Dutch couple had done that hike the day before and said it was lovely.
Another reason I was curious about the singing sands was that when I first arrived in England, I read a Josephine Tey mystery called The Singing Sands in which the detective traveled to an island in the Hebrides (not Eigg) in search of the singing sands. So when I read the list of hikes and saw Singing Sands I decided I definitely wanted to see/hear them. The detective had found them peaceful and restorative; I hoped they'd do the same for me.
I had another laminated map and instructions on how to get there put together by Make Tracks but the Dutch couple advised me to follow a slightly longer trail. They said the scenery was beautiful. The islanders have mapped out some trails and colour coded them.
This is a photo of the map; there's a large poster of it at the ferry landing and you can also buy the maps at the gift shop. Our hosts at Kildonan lent us copies. The trails are hard to see in the photo but at least it's a visual of what I am talking about.
Kildonan Farm, where I started from, is on the point at the end of the red trail close to the bottom right of the island. I walked up a long road (the grey line) to the edge of the forest, the darker green on the map and then up through the forest, following the orange trail to where the blue trail began. The trails are a series of splodges of coloured paint on stones, on fence posts and sometimes even on the ground. I was amazed that they were easier to follow than the trails on the mainland although I did run into difficulty the following day with the Cathedral Cave.
At this point I'd come out of the forest and walked to the dark ridge, about to descend to the first beach at Laig Bay--not the singing sands.
I think that's the Isle of Muck in the distance.
Greylag geese on the beach at Laig Bay. They're the largest kind of goose in the UK and Europe. I don't know much about birds (again it's the city girl thing) so I had to ask my fellow guests at the farm that night. There are supposed to be loads of different bird species on Eigg but although I often heard them, I didn't see very many. Maybe I'm just not good at looking??
This is actually a road on Eigg, shared by walkers, cars and cows.
My first look at the singing sands. Actually, that island in the distance looks like Rum with its cloud cap. The sun broke through as I tried to find my way down through the pasture and cliff to the beach. I ran into a herd of cows led by a bull with rather long horns so swiftly retraced my steps and came down a different way.
Aaah at the beach. The sun was shining, it felt so warm that I took off my boots and socks and, voila, feet revealed! First time my hard working feet have seen the light of day outside for the whole of this trip. I walked around on the sand and, while it didn't sing, it definitely squeaked. The sand is made of quartz and that's why it squeaks apparently. It was brilliantly white and the beach was--well--squeaky clean as well. There were a few other people down on the beach too, all enjoying the day.
I felt that this beach was as beautiful as any I have seen in the US, the Bahamas, Hawaii, Bermuda....
I stayed on the beach for a good hour, just relaxing after my 5-mile walk. Then the clouds seemed to be moving in so I packed up the remains of my packed lunch. I looked up at the cliffs--that was another option for me to get back to Kildonan--but decided I was too tired to take on a cliff. So I walked back along the road from Howlin. I was glad of my decision as 15 minutes after I started along the road it started to rain quite hard. The road itself was quite hilly so that when I got back to the farmhouse my calves were so sore I could hardly hobble up and down the stairs to the attic. I was glad to be the first one back because that meant I could take a nice long bath in the narrow but deep tub. I felt so much better. Then the Dutch couple returned, we compared notes about our hike--they said the hike to the Sgurr was challenging and, considering how fit they were, I decided that was one hike I wasn't going to do. Another wonderful meal cooked by Mairi, a roaring fire in the woodstove, a good book on the history of Eigg and I was as relaxed as a cooked noodle.
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