And learnt a bit of Scottish farm wisdom: “Worrying is a serious offence.”

It is a grey winter Sunday here in Slovenia and I unexpectedly find myself with some free time, which has been sparse lately, so I figured I’ll tell you another travel story.

Back in 2018 when I was studying abroad in the UK, I made it a point to explore as much as I could. One of those outings led me to the Isle of Skye, the largest of the Outer Hebrides islands. It was in late January, almost everything was closed, the weather was horrid as it is most of the time in the UK, but even more so during the winter, and the public transport was barely running on schedule. Although Isle of Skye is normally an extremely popular tourist destination, in winter it is a veritable ghost town. Despite that or perhaps I should say because of it, it was one of my favorite destinations to date.

I probably don’t need to tell you that the Scottish Highlands are amongst the most beautiful, mystical and rugged natural sights in the world, and the Isle of Skye is doubly so. Even in winter when the green gives way to shades of orange and murky brown, it is still a gorgeous place and I enjoyed every moment outdoors despite the incessant rain and mud. Since I was not particularly well prepared for this trip, I did not realise that all the main attractions would be closed in January, but I was only there for a few days anyway.

One of the places I planned to visit was Dunvegan castle, the ancestral home of clan MacLeod, which is famous for its gardens and the colony of wild seals on the shores of Loch Dunvegan. Well, even though the castle and the seal-watching boat tours were closed during winter, I was told that it is not uncommon to see wild seals swimming around in the Dunvegan area, particularly on a quiet day when there are no noisy tourists about. Nature is never closed after all, so I packed a sandwich and took the bus to Dunvegan, then I headed up the road to Dùn Fiadhairt Broch, the remains of an Iron Age circular stone building located on a small peninsula across the bay from Dunvegan castle (which looked very impressive from afar).

When I looked it up online, the broch and its surrounding area were listed as a popular bird and wildlife observation zone. I should have known that in Scotland that would mean walking through some type of wetland… Isle of Skye is typically described with words like “lush woodlands, rolling moorlands, wiry heather fields and vast peat-bogs”, but let’s be honest, in winter with all that rain, most of it is one giant swamp. There was supposed to be a trail crossing from the mainland to the peninsula with Dùn Fiadhairt Broch, but I’d already sunk into soft wetland past my ankles twice by the time I made it to the broch.

On the way there I encountered a proper bird watcher, one of those guys with all the right gear: rubber boots halfway up his thighs with a camouflage raincoat, a bunch of bird encyclopaedias in plastic wrappers, an expensive waterproof camera on its own stand and so on. Besides me he was the only one around for miles – it was mid-morning a Sunday and although the village of Dunvegan is supposed to be lovely, it is no longer a bustling port since the last steamboats from the Outer Hebrides stopped coming in the 1950s. We struck up a conversation about the local wildlife and he was very excited about some rare type of bird that had apparently been seen in the area in the past couple of days. He laughed at how woefully underprepared I was for the swamp conditions, then wished me luck on my seal-finding quest and off I went towards the sea.

Loch Dunvegan is a deep sea inlet on the west coast of Skye, which is why the seals have made their colony there. Luckily it wasn’t raining at the time, and the sun even came out for a bit, so I could walk around and enjoy the view along the coast. Just as I was starting to give up on encountering any seals, I spotted some bouncy grey shapes in the choppy water and there they were. There were at least five of them splashing around quite far off from the shore, but then two of them swam closer to check me out. I started making stupid cutesy noises and they seemed intrigued and kept bouncing around and popping up out of the water. When I decided to head back, one of the smaller ones started swimming along and kept pace with me, so I tried to coax him to follow me to a small bay, I think it was Oban Duin. It was possible to reach the water there via the rocks, so I sat down on one as close to the water as I could without falling in and proceeded to eat my sandwich. The young seal was very intrigued and kept bouncing back and forth in the water, coming closer if I kept still and torpedoing away at the slightest movement. It took me a very long time to eat that sandwich and by the time I was done I’d made a friend. 🙂

Once my sandwich was done and the seal got bored of me, I headed back. I already wrote about my (failed) expedition to Uig and Fairy Glen and how I hitched a ride with the postman, which was a day or two before my foray into Dunvegan. Since there was apparently nothing more interesting on the Isle than the lone red-haired and perpetually rain-soaked tourist walking down empty roads at the time, there was already a ride waiting for me before I even made it back to the Dunvegan bus station.

Apparently the friendly bird watcher thought I might need a ride and figured Portree was the only possible place I could be staying at (he was very right), so he phoned his old aunt who was “just heading out” in that direction. She proceeded to scrutinise every detail of my life in thick Scottish brogue during the 20 minute ride and strictly forbade me from attempting to do a hike in the Quairaing on my own in the next days, because “it smelt like snow oot” – and again, she was very right. I tried the easier hike up to the Old man of Storr instead and got caught in a small snow storm, but that is another tale. For now I leave you with a bit of Scottish farm wisdom: “worrying is a serious offence”.