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

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As you journey down the road you encounter first, just at a bend, a green knoll that bears the name An Sithean. This means ‘fairy hill’, and here at night if you listen with an open mind, you may well hear the sounds of fairy music rising through the ground. Whether or not you believe in fairies, An Sithean gives you a good view of Coire-chatachan, the MacKinnon home twice visited by Johnson and Boswell during their visit to Skye in 1773, and a year earlier by Thomas Pennant.

Further into the glen you reach the ruined church of Cill Chriosd, ivy- and cotoneaster-clad, surrounded by a graveyard much older than the church, and which may date from prehistoric times. The church, the former parish church of Strath, evidently existed in the early 16th century, and probably during the late 15th, but had ceased to be used by 1840, having fallen into disrepair.

Soon the glen runs out to the crofting township of Torrin, and on to reach the shores of Loch Slapin, beyond which towers the great grey, splintered bulk of Bla Bheinn, inspiration of many poems, and considered by Alexander Nicolson, local pioneer of Cuillin exploration, to be the finest hill on Skye. With so many fine summits in attendance, the discerning walker might spend a week or more among the hills and glens of Strath, without once feeling the need to trouble the Cuillin for entertainment.