The Isle of Skye - Hunting for Stones Part 2

The Isle of Skye - Hunting for Stones Part 2

Dunscaith Castle

The final two stones I was seeking were the Dunscaith Castle Stone and the lifting stones of An Sithean. As with many of the Scottish stones, the locations these two took me to were nothing short of stunning. Both these locations were visited on my final day in Skye, so we will start chronologically with An Sithean, the first stop of the morning.

Just a few miles south of Broadford, An Sithean lies both imposing and hidden at the same time. Not particularly marked any maps, there's no signage, and in a land full of impressive views, it'd be easy to not notice it, your gaze stolen by Beinn na Caillich looming in the background.

An Sithean. Beinn na Caillich towards the left of the photo, with one of the Celtic-Viking ruins directly below it. Ignore the pillock who decided this was a sensible place to park his motor home.

The view looking away from An Sithean

This was a stone lifting site mentioned by Peter Martin, and in the contents of his unreleased book, for your recap. I was unable to find any information for myself on this area, but the "brief" as it were was: multiple stones, lifted NOT on the fairy hill itself but by the roadside, and by my own addition, not stones that were potentially related to the archaeological sites present. I had used Google "streetview" in an attempt to get an idea of what could be worth looking at, so we will start there. Below is a few up close images of those stones I had identified from Mr.Google. 

 

So it's clear that two of them are old parts of a fence or similar, and weren't around a long time ago for lifting. The one with my UK size 11 boot for scale is very large, so maybe it was a lifting stone for those far stronger than I - certainly it's not a bad shape for lifting and wasn't particularly slick. 

That avenue explored I went off searching the site, both directly below An Sithean and on the other side of the road. I could not particularly find much on the other side of the road, and was left with two or three candidates. 

The two stones to the bottom right of this picture?

A closer look. Both relatively entrenched, the redder one less so. 

The red stone with my foot for scale again. 

Ten or so metres to the left of the above pictures I found this stone, centre bottom of the photo, nestled in amongst the long grasses. 

If I was to make the assumption that the lifting stones here were still existent and this was the right side of the road, I would make a wild guess that any of these three could be good candidates. As the stone in the last picture was the easiest to remove from it's resting place without disturbing everything around it, I decided it would be amiss to not make a lift here within the stunning scenery and to add my name to the list of those who have come before me and lifted stones at An Sithean. It was a fun shape, almost tooth like at one end that threw it's centre of gravity off, with a fairly rough texture to it. Not the heaviest, and I'm rubbish at guessing weights but maybe 90-95kg. 

Hitting the road again we looped back to Broadford to begin the journey to the southern end of the Island, passing by Camus Cross where one would want to visit if you were seeking Clach Chraboith I'c Thealaich. The scenery on southern Skye differs vastly from the rest of the Island which is far sparser, compared to the more dense greenery and forests on the Sleat peninsula. The road down to Dunscaith castle is a very windy and hilly single track road - just as well there is far fewer tourists on this road compared to some! That is certainly one aspect I appreciated, all three stone locations we visited were almost completely devoid of other tourists - the MacCrimmion piping memorial we had to ourselves and probably would've done for days. Dunscaith we had to ourselves and saw one other couple approaching as we left, and An Sithean was near silent bar the motorhome numpty and one other tourist who had an interest in Paleolithic stone structures. Compared to the relative bustle the rest of Skye experienced as tourist season starts to ramp up for the summer months, it was a welcome reprieve. 

As the road takes you to the coastline, there's a small smattering of spread out houses and holiday homes, but nothing to let you know that Dunscaith Castle is nearby save for a small home-made sign on a gate post. Given the present fortifications date back to the 1200s, and likely sit on-top of far older buildings, the fact that this castle is so relatively forgotten about is a great shame.

Yours truly in the above three photos demonstrating how to leave the castle. The steps are in good condition, but getting across what remains of the drawbridge is a little more tricky.  The drop is probably about 7-8 feet, with lots of large hard stones underneath to not cushion your fall. We shuffled slowly across the sides, leaning over the wall as much as we could for handholds. Smaller feet are beneficial here!

The source for this "Clach Neart", said thus: "right below the castle or dun, and resting on a huge flat rock, is a perfectly round stone of a very considerable size and apparent weight". As discussed at the time of my original post on this stone, that's a little ambiguous to some extent. 

On the castle, facing back towards Skye. There's little left as you can see, and certainly no flat stone with a large round stone resting on it. 

Hoping to find the stone "on" the castle with the above description seemed unlikely, and a look around agreed. After crossing the perilous bridge back, we scrambled down to the ground "beneath" the castle to look there - clearly three sides of the castle grounds are either tidal or covered in water, so this left pretty much just the area around the drawbridge - definitely what I would describe as right below the castle. 

The largest drawback here is the state of the area. Abandoned in the 1700s, Father Time has had his way with the castle, and there's a lot of debris that has fallen off the castle in the ensuing centres and ended up down here - what was a part of the castle or here all along is difficult to ascertain sometimes. If one is into Geo-Caching, there's a "Geo Cache" to be found here too!

In the above photo I see a castle, myself situated "below" the castle and also a huge flat rock, in the bottom left. I couldn't quite work out if it was split into two parts, or if the other part is seperate. As flat rocks go, that is a very flat rock. Is the second "bit" rubble that has fallen over the years? Or part of the flat rock one day until some falling rubble caused it to break? As you can see, there is no large round stone resting on it - our Clach Neart. Again, time may have beaten us. The area is full of nettles which maybe covering our stone, or it maybe buried under the rubble or simply broken and lost. If the footing had been better I would have liked to put a stone on the flat rock, but didn't fancy risking an ankle joint or two.

The drop one would have if you slipped crossing the drawbridge - take care!

That's the end of my Skye trip, and well done if you've managed to read it all. If you're interesting in going to Skye yourself, I highly recommend it, for it is an amazing place to enjoy. If you fancy going there with stones in mind then I would love to hear from you, for as I mentioned there's places I didn't manage to visit, and for now those shall go into my back pocket.