Trip report: Skye, Raasay, Rona and Soay, 2015

[rbmatthews]

It was Oliver Davies' ex who told us about it, and we went looking for it. It's quite a long walk across the grain of the island. From seaward, you can see a short stump of a post on the top of the cliff, where the quarry was. There's a reef of rock running out, just under there, and presumably the boats came in and lay there. Rather them than me, it's fully exposed to the west. It's worth looking for, and wondering.....

Where exactly on the coast was it? There seem to be some goings on around Na Gamhnaichean with a Port an t-Seilisdeir, a reef, and some shieldings, but that is more on the SW coast. There doesn't seem to be much on the NW coast. Strange that there is so little left on the shore of what must have been quite an enterprise.

 

[rbmatthews]

When I look back at it, it was a magical place to spend a childhood although at the time I'm not so sure I thought that! We lived in the house with it's own beach at the top of the bay. You would have looked down at it on your way over the hill from the harbour to the village. We had the small half of the island and Tex had the other. The pic in my avatar was my very first craft of my own making, on the big loch when I was about 8 or 9. Duncan runs a fish operation in Orkney.

Thanks for the background. Really interesting. I do remember looking down on that house, and in fact did walk down to it. Again, it looked like someone had been living there recently, but couldn't see any sign of life at the time. Perhaps the couple that Kelpie mentions?

 

[NormanS]

Where exactly on the coast was it? There seem to be some goings on around Na Gamhnaichean with a Port an t-Seilisdeir, a reef, and some shieldings, but that is more on the SW coast. There doesn't seem to be much on the NW coast. Strange that there is so little left on the shore of what must have been quite an enterprise.

Now looking at an OS map, I realise that the way the island lies, the quarry wasn't on the NW Coast, but just south of the Western point. An approximate GR would be 427138.

 

[bikedaft]

you can see a small sandstone outcrop on google earth etc there.

must have been interesting loading the stone, not often calm about there.