Glen Sligachan
June 3, 2008 by Bird
Filed under Blog, Hikes And Walks, On My Travels
We camped at the head of Glen Sligachan. As we rounded the final bend on our bus journey and the driver called out to let us know we had arrived, the emerging panorama thumped me in the belly with a disorientating awe. No word or picture can begin to describe the immensity of the landscape, and I am sad that the pictures I include here can’t help but diminish the vastness and beauty of the place.
The campsite nestles beside the river, and it’s a short and happy walk to Hotel Sligachan with it’s jaw dropping single malt whisky menu. Glamaig, the highest of the Red hills was the first thing I saw every morning, and if I troubled to glance to the right, there were the stark and towering Black Cuillins. The latter mountains are considered a fair challenge to any climber, and although the red hills look impressive enough to me, Glamaig is host to a race from the hotel to its peak and back again, the fastest time being under 50 minutes! The wild landscape is not the only source of fascination on the inner Hebrides. Equally noticeable if you are camping (and a little disorientating to be sure) is the fact that at this time of year, the sky never gets entirely dark. There is still light in the sky at midnight, and wandering back to the tents from the hotel bar after a gruelling session of whisky tasting, we would be treated to the sound of cuckoos calling in the eerie half light.
How do you pronounce Sligachan? Well there’s a question, because while I’ve had the pronunciation described to me as “Slig-a-han”, the locals seem to swallow most of the middle of the word completely. To my untutored ears it sounded more like “Sliaccun”, and that’s only an approximation. It’s a friendly island, and despite my usual shyness I found myself chatting away happily to whoever I met, and whoever I met, they all seemed to be fiercely proud of their wild and beautiful home.
Of course, nowhere is perfect. Before your eyes start to cross with the grandiosity and smugness of my depiction of our campsite, there was one significant (ahem) fly in the ointment that you should know about. Midges. But more about that later…
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Amazing varities of colours in the hills and mountains! I’ve never seen anything like it. Reminds me a bit of what Queenstown in Tasmania looked like twenty years ago which was ‘naked’ from mining! I can see vegetation in your photographs, but most looks like low scrubland?
Hi Anonybird! I think the area was forested after the glaciers retreated at the end of the ice age, but it got logged by prehistoric man. So although there are no mines it’s an ancient manmade landscape. I’ll have to look up pictures of Queenstown to get the comparison! Wet heath, grassland and peat bog are the common habitats, there were virtually no naturally wooded areas where we stayed but there is some plantation forestry on the rest of the island and some natural woodland too. Nothing seems to grow above a certain altitude, probably because of fierce winds and lack of soil. The tops of the hills and mountains are like lunar landscapes – not that we made it up to look at them