A Favourite View 
from the Hill of the Wild Garlic

 All images COPYRIGHT asserted - David Geddes at The Open Sky

Its not too far. If the sunset and weather hold promise, its only 40 minutes of climbing to reach the rocky spur that faces west to Plockton, Skye, and between November and February, the sun setting behind the far Rum Cuillin to the south of Skye. 

It is possible to look back towards our house over looking Strome Castle Bay, but really its the unfolding sunset colours to the west that are intriguing. Perched up high, having been distracted by woodcock and roedeer, the colours develop, intensify, change and all too soon fade into the arms of the night. Merlins, Kestril, Buzzards and Sparrowhawk are common here. Rabbits are non existant. Voles and field mice are common. Hares populate the higher reaches of the hill. Eagles soar by once in a while. We have seen the dolphins in the loch quite clearly ambushing unseen shoals carried up the loch on the incoming tide.

The journey down is colder and more difficult with stepped rock slabs and small shaded drops to avoid. The dogs generally find their simple right way quite naturally.

I love coming up here to watch in the silence, bar the faint bird cries from the coast and the bark of another roebuck disturbed by a foraging chocolate labrador or two with a scenting ability like early warning radar.

In the spring there are the first primulae and purple saxifrages to find. In the summer the faint path reveals 3 forms of orchid. Occasionally there are shouts from the climbers under instruction on the dry tooling crag. Its below us. This is Bad a Chreamha, the hill of the wild garlic. Its like an extension of my garden, where wild garlic grows.

This is home, where the heart is, and I cannot tire of coming up here. I never shall.

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