free to be able to rate and comment on reports (as well as access 1:25000 mapping).
We didn’t have far to travel for our walk this morning. We are staying in Staffin so it was a short drive on the Staffin-Uig road to the parking area at the top of the hill. Backpacks on, boots laced up and we were ready for our first walk of our week on Skye.
We headed south along the ridge so we had views on our left of the Outer Hebrides and at one point a view down to Cleat. We continued along the ridge approaching the flat summit of Bioda Buidhe. We descended the grassy slope south and east of the summit for a great view back to the north that overlooked Druim an Ruma. Once I had taken plenty of photos we headed primarily west trying to keep as much altitude as possible.
We dropped down to the low spot of the ridge once we had gone west far enough to line up with the ridge as it turned south again. Once we reached Bealach nan Coisichean it appeared we could drop down below the cliffs but Barb was not comfortable with my suggestion. We continued on the Trotternish Ridge over the rocky strewn field of Druim na Coille and then over to Bealach na Uige. The steep grassy slope here was more to her liking, so we headed down to below the cliffs here for our walk back.
We shortly came upon a fence with a row of barbed wire we would have to cross. Fortunately, we found some large rocks near the fence line that allowed us enough elevation to get over the fence without injury, provided the other person was able to hold the barbed wire down far enough at the time of crossing. We tried to stay high on the grass slope on the walk back as that would reduce the elevation we would have to regain at the end. To stay high we did much of the return walk on narrow sheep trails across the hillside.
As we neared the base of Bioda Buidhe we entered a mini valley which we passed through as we headed toward Druim an Ruma. We went up the steep hill between the main cliff and the adjacent hill and worked our way through a boulder field. From the high point we had an excellent view back toward the Quiraing and Cleat that was just below us. We worked down the steep slope to the bottom where we rested and had an apple and Mars bar while we enjoyed the up close view of Cleat.
To finish up our walk we again followed the hillside north until we could go up and over the hill to reach the road at the one switchback. It was then up the road to the parking area and our car.
