Читать книгу The Isle of Skye. Graded walks and scrambles throughout Skye, including the Cuillin онлайн

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By raven, Skye extends 78km (49 miles) from Rubha Hunish to the Point of Sleat, and if you travelled in a straight line overland from east to west you would cover 43km (27 miles). Yet such is the irregularity of the Island’s coastline, probed by many fjord-like lochs, that you are rarely far from the sea, and never more than 8km (5 miles).

One of the earliest descriptions of Skye appeared in 1549, when Dean Munro wrote: ‘The iyle is callit by the Erishe, Ellan Skyane, that is to say in English, the Wingitt ile, be reason it has maney wings and points lyand furth frae it through the devyding of thir lochs.’

The original derivation of the Island’s name is lost, but many hold that it comes from Sgiath, the Norwegian for ‘wing’, while others contend it derives from another Norwegian word ‘ski’, meaning a mist, hence ‘The Misty Isle’.

Setting aside these fundamental controversies of nomenclature, which merely serve to spark the flame of Skye’s inordinate appeal, the Island is the most popular of all islands among tourists, mountaineers and walkers: botanists, photographers, natural history observers, too, find endless fascination within the bounds of Skye’s ragged coastline.