Staffin Bay Beach or Brogaig (Norse for Breeches Bay) 19th Feb

For a change I was awake before Vince as the sun streamed in through the sides of the curtain on our little attic window - the Phenergan had obviously worked and he was still in the land of nod.

After a while I got up, it was 8.30am by then, and went downstairs to start my morning chores and also do yesterday’s blog. I enjoyed watching Alan's cows coming into the front field, mooing in the hope of getting fed I'm sure. I love it on the farm, I have all the fun of feeling connected to the animals, and giving them pet names of my own, without having to do any of the hard work or dirty stuff that the Crofter's have to do on a daily basis - they work so hard!

By 10.00am I thought it best to wake him, as there was a bit of sunshine in the morning, but by the time he got up, I made my now famous “spaceship pancakes” using the wonky frying pan for our breakfast and we packed up our gear ready - the weather had closed in again.

So it was rugged up like the Michelin Blimp, and covered in my wet weather trousers, jacket and wellies and out into the fray!

We stopped briefly to take some shots of Huey, Dewey and Louie (our resident highland claves) and I can actually now tell them apart. They are nicely lined up for you in the photo….meet the gorgeous Huey (the show-off), Dewey the lighter of the three in the middle, and Louie slightly darker at the end. They all seem to get along quite well.

Then we stopped again a bit further up the road, as there was an epic shot of a shaggy sheep adorned with horns, with the snowcapped mountain in the background… but by the time we stopped the car and got out it had moved - BUGGER! I NEED TO DEVELOP MY SHEEP STEALTH!

We approached the little crofting township of Stenscholl (Norse for Stone Slope) that overlooks Brogaig (Norse for Breeches Bay), but we have been calling in Staffin Bay Beach - so I’m not sure which is actually correct, the maps or the signs!

It was a bit of a walk down the steep slope but thankfully there was an obvious path, a bit muddy here and there but in Skye terms - bloody excellent! So long as you kept to the path you could avoid the majority of the bog and not do a disappearing act up to your knees or thighs - so that was fantastic for a change. I did take one hiking pole with me just to test depths of things here and there and provide a bit of stability on the uneven ground.

We had to the beach to ourselves, not surprisingly given the weather, but it was fantastic for photographs, and I even had a go at the “intentional movement” technique that Lynne, from the Skye Blue Gallery talked about in the article she photocopied for me. I was pretty pleased with myself for a first attempt but its got a long way to go.

On the way back home, we stopped in at the Staffin Store, as we had run out of bread and milk, I also got some bread rolls and mint sauce (for some lamb chops I have in the freezer from the Portree Butcher in the Portacabin.

Back home, I made us some bacon and egg rolls for lunch, and Vince got the fire on. His feet were soaking wet and very cold so he needed to thaw out a bit poor thing.

Then I started on a few domestic chores - like cleaning the oven - yep even on holiday there’s no rest for the wicked!

I was going to make Marocan Lamb Tagine (using a dutch oven instead as my Tagine is back in Australia) but then I realised we had forgotten to get Cous Cous, so I will just marinate it and cook it tomorrow when we can get some Cous Cous to go with it. I’ll just do bangers and mash instead tonight!

The weather has worsened since we got home so although it’s only 3.00pm we probably won’t head out again, unless of course there is an Aurora Alert tonight and the cloud cover is favourable, but realistically there’s probably two chances of that - NONE and BUCKLEY’S!