Spirits on the Quiraing

The Quiraing is a mountain on the end of the Trotternish peninsula of Skye, N.W. Scotland. From its summit you can see the 130 mile long outer Hebridean island chain and the entire North West coast of Scotland in a 270 degree panoramic vista.

Coaches and tourists claim it during the high season and it's popular with walkers most other weekends, so those who feel at home with mountains and solitude would do better to choose early morning or late evening, on a weekday in Winter or Spring for a visit. An easy stroll out from the car park or a longer walk up from Staffin village brings you under its steep and overhanging cliffs and that in itself is worth doing. For those with just a little more stamina, a great route to the top, continues round under its eastern promontory, then onto the northern saddle and easy slopes to the summit, "Meall na Suiramach", usually returning the same way.

But it does have another curious corner. A flat and grassy Table, not half the size of a football pitch, hangs tantalisingly just beyond reach below its Northernmost crags. From the south-east, a tricky and particularly steep grass and loose scree slope climbs directly up, through the middle of its dizzy imposing cliffs. It's only a short jaunt but it feels like you're climbing up and under the portcullis of Valhalla. Even the experienced tread this with care and it isn't for the meek when snow or wet grass are underfoot. A lesser known, still steep but more stable walk that climbs directly up through a gully to the north-east, is safer, but harder to find for the uninitiated. Both walks comes with a slight risk of weather-loosened boulders falling from the heights above.

This is one of my places. You can listen to the wind here, and you can hear the world grinding around on its axis. On a wild and stormy day, it's one of the corners of our planet that defines the word, 'magnificent'.

A few years ago, someone, I've no idea who, trudged, struggled and sweated up through these steep cliffs and crags and loose pebbles, carrying the massive weight of an inscribed gravestone, a tribute to someone who passed away but who loved this particular place.

It lies resting, simply propped against the cliff at the rear of the Table and surrounded by a few small stones.

Spirits live here now.