Kilmory
The weather looked decent for Thursday, so I decided to do a day trip out to Kilmory (Kil-moor-ee).
My path to Kilmory
From Kinloch, the main road cuts across the island’s interior then splits; you take the south fork to go to Harris, and the north fork to go to Kilmory.
Though I’d seen glimpses from the nature trail the day before, this was was my first time getting into the real heart of the island. Even before the road split off, I was blown away by the scenery:
It was pretty gusty (up to 40mph!) as you can see from some of the grass. The colors are hard to fully capture too, especially the spectrum of greens, which run from yellowish to silver.
After the split, you enter the Kilmory Red Deer Research area. They were everywhere, including the beach! Luckily they know to be wary of humans (it’s almost time for the annual stag ‘cull’).
After making it to the Kilmory beach, I turned back towards Kinloch. But I was feeling good, and I wanted to keep the adventure going. So when I came across the sign for the research project again, I decided to follow the directions of that little white stone at the bottom.
… because it was pointing to Guirdil bothy! The story I’m working on is set in a bothy, and seeing one or both of the two bothies on the island was top of the list. Why not tackle it on my first full day, I thought?
WAIT. What’s a '“bothy”? Bothies are basic shelters in remote places that are left unlocked so they can be used by walkers or anyone who comes upon it (most were originally built for laborers). In Scotland, these buildings are maintained by the Mountain Bothies Association (MBA)
As it turned out, there were many reasons NOT to tackle Guirdil bothy on my first full day. As soon as I started up the path, it started raining. I had been warned of the fickle nature of the weather and already had my rain jacket on, so that was fine… but the path very rough, and very minimally marked (a few white stones indicated the general direction at one turn, but that was it. Also, the path was basically a stream bed.
Naturally, I figured I should just go NEXT to the path, into that nice grass on the SIDE of the path. This, naturally, was a mistake. That ‘nice grass’ was bog. The muddy path was the LEAST muddy path one could hope to get, as your feet would sink into grass and muck to either side. My legs were already tired, and I managed to get both of my boots completely covered (inside and out) with mud. I tried to continue to squelch up the path a bit further, but then it started to rain again.
I called it. Guirdil would have to wait.
My little doomed bothy excursion added on a bit of mileage, so I ended up with wet feet and fourteen miles total. But when the view on the way home looked like this, how mad could I be?
