Journey 01 · Scotland
Eleven Rolls in the Rain
Skye, ten days, one camera
Published 13 Jun 2025 · Travelled 10–19 May 2025
- 8 moments
- 10 days
- 144 km
- Spring
- United Kingdom
- 38mm · f/5.6 · 1/250
- 57.4125° N, 6.1948° W
- Roll one, frame 01 — Portra 400
- Portree harbour
- 18:20
- 11°C, cloud, brief sun
The bus from Inverness takes three and a half hours and the last hour is the good one. Portree's harbour front is painted the way a child would paint a harbour front, and it was low tide, and the seaweed smelled the way the fish market at home smells at the end of the day. First frame of the first roll, before I had even found the guesthouse.
- 38mm · f/8 · 1/500
- 57.5500° N, 6.2200° W
- Roll three, frames 14 and 15
- The Trotternish road, above Uig
- 12:10
- 13°C, bright, wind
Half of Skye's roads are one lane with passing places, and the other traffic is cattle. These four were lying across the tarmac above Uig and were not going to do anything about it. I got out, took two frames, got back in, and waited eleven minutes. The driver behind me switched his engine off, which told me how long this usually takes.
eleven minutes and nobody sounded a horn
- 38mm · f/5.6 · 1/125
- 57.5064° N, 6.1811° W
- Roll four frame 09, and roll eleven frame 34
- 38mm · f/5.6 · 1/125
- 57.5064° N, 6.1811° W
- Roll four frame 09, and roll eleven frame 34
- The Old Man of Storr
- 08:50
- 8°C, cloud, then not
The first morning I walked up in cloud so low I could hear people I could not see, and the pinnacles came out grey and flat and I assumed the roll was wasted. On the last morning I went back because I had two frames left and nothing to do with them. Same rock, same lens, same film. I could not tell you which one I actually prefer.
- 38mm · f/2.8 · 1/30
- 57.4131° N, 6.1952° W
- Roll five, frame 22 — HP5 pushed to 1600
- Portree, off the square
- 16:05
There is a point in the day here where you have been rained on enough that you stop counting, and the correct response is to go inside and order chips and something dark. I did this four times in ten days. The T2 came out of my coat pocket steaming slightly, which I have decided is fine.
Overheard · Sligachan · 09:30
"Is it going to clear?" — "It's going to do everything. That's not the same as clearing." He had a dog on a rope and had been standing in the car park for as long as I had, so I took him at his word and went anyway.
- 38mm · f/8 · 1/250
- 57.6431° N, 6.2947° W
- Roll seven, frame 18
- The Quiraing, Trotternish
- 15:40
- 9°C, grey, hard wind
It is a landslip the size of a district, all ridges and green table-tops that look like they were poured rather than eroded, and a fixed 38 gets you about a third of it. So the frame became about the man sitting on the edge instead, who had walked up in jeans and was completely still for the whole time I was there.
- 38mm · f/8 · 1/500
- 57.6033° N, 6.1719° W
- Roll eight, frame 03
- Mealt Falls, Kilt Rock
- 11:15
- 10°C, showers, wind
At Kilt Rock the burn simply arrives at the cliff and leaves, straight into the sea, ninety metres, and the wind takes about a third of it back up. There is a railed viewpoint and a coach park and I still stood there for half an hour. Sea spray got on the front element and I did not notice until three frames later.
- Elgol slipway
- 18:50
- 10°C, clear at last
- Last frame
You drive an hour down a dead-end road to a slipway and then the whole Cuillin ridge is across the water, black and serrated and doing nothing at all. I went at six in the evening for the light on the ridge and again at half past four the next morning because I could not sleep. The second one is a long exposure on a rock, no tripod, the camera propped on my folded jacket.
- 38mm · f/2.8 · 8s
- 57.1450° N, 6.1064° W
- Roll ten, frames 30 and 36 — the last two on the island
The route
8 stops
Journey completed
Ten days, eight stories
- Distance walked
- 71 km
- Frames exposed
- 396
- Rolls shot
- 11
- Rolls I got wrong
- 1, badly
- Days without rain
- 0
- Favourite moment
- The Storr coming out of cloud for one frame and then going back in
- Best food
- Chips and a pint in Portree at four in the afternoon with wet trousers, which is the correct time
