Dunvegan and Duirinish
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-> Dunvegan and Duirinish
After the Glen Brittle turning, the A863 slips across bare rounded hills to skirt the bony sea cliffs and stacks of the west coast twenty miles or so north to DUNVEGAN (Dłn Bheagain). It's an unimpressive place, strung out along the east shore of the sea loch of the same name, though it does make quite a good base for exploring the interesting peninsula of Duirinish.
The main tourist trap in the village is Dunvegan Castle (daily: April-Oct 10am-5.30pm; Nov-March 11am-4pm; £5.50, gardens only £4) which sprawls on top of a rocky outcrop, sandwiched between the sea and several acres of beautifully maintained gardens. It's been the seat of the Clan MacLeod since the thirteenth century, but the present greying, rectangular fortress, with its uniform battlements and dummy pepper pots, dates from the 1840s. Inside, you don't get a lot of castle for your money and the contents are far from stunning, the most intriguing being the battered remnants of the Fairy Flag in the drawing room. This yellow silken flag from the Middle East may have been the battle standard of the Norwegian king, Harald Hardrada, who had been the commander of the imperial guard in Constantinople.
The hammerhead Duirinish peninsula lies to the west of Dunvegan, much of it inaccessible to all except walkers prepared to scale or skirt the area's twin flat-topped basalt peaks: Healabhal Bheag (1600ft) and Healabhal Mhor (1538ft). The mountains are better known as MacLeod's Tables, for legend has it that the MacLeod chief held an open-air royal feast on the lower of the two for James V. The main areas of habitation lie to the north, along the western shores of Loch Dungeon, and in the broad green sweep of Glen Dale, attractively dotted with white farmhouses and dubbed "Little England" by the locals, due to its high percentage of "white settlers", English incomers searching for a better life. Glen Dale's current predicament is doubly ironic given its history, for it was here in 1882 that local crofters staged a rent strike against their landlords, the MacLeods. Five locals - who became known as the "Glen Dale Martyrs" - were given two-month prison sentences, and eventually, in 1904, the crofters became the first owner-occupiers in the Highlands.
All this, and a great deal more about nineteenth-century crofting, is told through fascinating contemporary news cuttings at Colbost Folk Museum (Easter-Oct daily 10am-6.30pm; £1), the oldest of Peter MacAskill's three Skye museums, situated in a restored blackhouse, four miles up the road from Dunvegan. A guide is usually on hand to answer questions, the peat fire smokes all day, and there's a restored illegal whisky still round the back. Further up the road, at BORRERAIG itself, where there was a famous piping college, is the MacCrimmon Piping Heritage Centre (late May to early Oct daily 11am-5.30pm; Easter to late May Tues-Sun same times; £1.50), on the ancestral holdings of the MacCrimmons, hereditary pipers to the MacLeod chiefs for three centuries, until they were sent packing in the 1770s. The plaintive sounds of the piobaireachd of the MacCrimmons, the founding family of Scottish piping, fill this illuminating museum.
As a result of such Clearances, the west coast of Duirinish is mostly uninhabited now. For walkers, though, it's a great area to explore, with blustery but easy footpaths leading to the dramatically sited lighthouse on Neist Point, Skye's most westerly spot, which features some fearsome sea cliffs and wonderful views across the sea to the Western Isles.
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