Feeding the Rat ｜ Isle Of Skye

Oh right, I have arrived. Can you guess where I am? All will be revealed in the morning but I'm absolutely knackered. It's about time is it? Half past midnight and Jerry is coming to pick me up from this location in about five and a half hours so I'm going to have a quick cup of tea, settle down for the night and I'll see you guys in the morning. I'd actually been working down in Edinburgh and hadn't left until 6pm and then spent the next, well best part of six hours driving all the way up here but one of the advantages of arriving late at this time of year was it was dark enough to see the aurora which was showing itself to the north and that also delayed me getting to bed. I tell you what the things we do for the mountains and getting to them, it really is, it has a grip on some of us doesn't it and that's certainly the case with me. Anyway I eventually settled down for the night and got a few hours sleep. So yeah you can see the hills behind me over here, that's Marsco, Garsven, one of my favourite ones in Bellig. If you're from the Isle of Skye, if you know your way around you'll know that's where I am but we're not heading up these ones, we're actually heading on to the main ridge today. Oh god, I tell you what, again I just think this is crazy if I wasn't, you know, if it wasn't me and I wasn't so addicted to going up bloody mountains. I've only had about four hours sleep but I feel good, whether I feel good after, you know, trudging up the mountain but yeah, on to the black cooling, scrambling required, helmet and harness just in case. So I'll bring you back when I'm in the car with Jenny and Mark. Coffee, kettle's just about boiled though so time for a well-needed caffeine boost. I enjoyed my coffee and before long Jerry and Mark picked me up and we were winging our way around to Glenbrittle out of the car and yeah heading up towards these magnificent mountains. This really are a special place, the black cooling and we were dead keen to get up onto the ridge, get climbing and enjoy the the scenery round about us. What a place to be. Right, hello everyone. I think the last time I spoke to you was back at the van and since then Jerry and Mark have picked me up and we're now on, we've been going for about an hour haven't we? Yes, almost exactly an hour. Exactly an hour and we're going up a couple of Munro's. Scuramadi and Scuragreda is it? How do you feel about being addicted to the mountains? What is this? Addicted to the mountains? Yeah, well I've not told them I was talking about the being addicted to the mountains. Oh right, addicted to the mountains. Yeah, I was just saying that coming up. What is wrong with me? What is wrong with me? You know, I'm meant to have golf clubs at this age. And Mark yourself? Well I mean it's a lifetime thing isn't it? You've been coming to the mountains so you don't know anything else. I think that's the first thing you probably heard Mark's voice Hello? All this stuff here I think is just saying that's Murray Wilkie for Stevie Butts and is back to the studio. It's not back to the studio, it'll be back to us a bit further up. Right, enough of this nonsense, shall we head up? Right, okay, that's us into the quarry now. Some place, all these quarries in the cooling, there's nowhere else really quite like them. In Scotland I don't think. You can see why they're called the Black Cooling. Magnificent mountains. I'll spin you around and show you where we're hoping to go. I don't know if you'll make it out but this gap here is Andoris. Scura Madi is on the left here. I think it's got four tops. I'll talk about that later. And then up here is Scura Grede. That's where we're headed for. We've only done about 500 meters so there's going to be a steep next 500 meters up here and the helmets and what have you will need to come on. I'm really looking forward to showing you the view at the top though when we're on the ridge. Yeah, what a place. Something's coming out though. What a place. Right, we'll bring you back later on. Right, you can probably see I've got my helmet on and I'll show you why that is. We're heading up the sort of scree slope, that's where I'm watching my feet, towards the gap which is called Andoris. You can see the area marked up there. You can see it's quite steep on either side so I just don't know if there's climbers above on the ridge. If anything gets knocked down I'd rather have my helmet on. So not long, I'll bring you back and we're up at the gap. Let's go. What a view. A lot of hens in the cloud. Are you doing okay? Yeah, I'm okay thanks. That's well worn and polished isn't it? So it was up to Skuramadi first and it's a wee scramble to get up onto the ridge but the views, this is why we do it I suppose, the views were just spectacular as you can see. Straight down Loch Carusk, back over towards Skurnastria and Blavn. It was lovely, it really was fantastic and you could see our second objective behind us, Skuragredi, and that was going to be more difficult. The technicality is a bit more on that one but for now we were just aiming to get to the top of the first Munro Skuramadi and it really is a knife edge ridge. Sometimes I say the 360 or action cam skew the footage but here it is as it looks. Not a place to slip. Anyway, before long we were approaching the summit of the hill. Oh right, that's us at the top of Skuravadi. Right at the top but look at this view down this way over Loch Carusk and then behind Gerry is the next objective which is Skuragredi. How are we all feeling? All right? Good. Box fresh. Good fun. Box fresh. Box fresh. I've got box fresh legs. After yesterday. After that scream. So yeah we'll bring you back to the top of Skuragredi. What a place though. What a place. Woohoo. Right let's go. So we descended back down to the window or the door as it's known at Andoras and then the next wee bit was a tricky wee scramble up onto the ridge going towards Skuragredi and once you were up that bit it was fairly steady going. Maybe one difficult step and this protrusion that you can see here was called the wart and we skirted around that and before long we were reaching the top of summit number two and again the views were just absolutely, absolutely amazing. And another thing about some of these tops on the Cooling Ridge is there's not much space so for this one I let Gerry and Mark head to the summit first while I sort of played about getting some pictures and some footage and they enjoyed their time on the summit. Hopefully you can see from this it's just a superb location and you can understand why we get addicted to these sorts of things can't you? Anyway they came down and it was my turn to scramble up to this eerie perch and take it all in. Really felt like I was on top of the world. What a place. Here I am on the top of Skuragredi where Gerry and Mark down yonder, they actually came up while I was fanning about with the drone. What a spot. Hopefully I've got some footage of the views down to Loch Russe. Unfortunately the south end of the ridge is in the clag today so we chose just right because you can see over to Bannerdick and south of there it's pretty claggy whereas if you come round out to the north over to Skurnagillen and Bastyr it's a bit better, a bit clearer. He says there's a cloud coming in but what a spot. It's just magical here. Right I'm going to head down and get some lunch and we'll bring you back later on but the views down Loch Russe are the ones that steal the show. Let's go down and have some lunch. So here I am with Gerry and Mark and I've just had a scotch egg which is obviously the best food but I was just thinking that today it's a bit breezy isn't it and the way we've been figuring out how strong the breeze is or me and Gerry have been just looking at Mark's hair and seeing how, I'm just jealous because I don't have any hair but however far, do you wish to comment Mark? Yeah Sam on Wednesday haircut. What do you think Gerry? I think it's a bit sort of hippie 60s, it's good, it's a bit sort of dirtbag, dirtbag claim on. I tell you what it's head and shoulders material or is that, is that, no no no head shoulders, what was the advert when they used to fluff the hair, wasn't head and shoulders, it was, I'll need to know what conditioner, that looks great, I'm just jealous again. Anyway right, we'll keep a note and we'll report back on the Mark wind scale of hair fluffiness. Using these days on your heads, marine varnish, two coats, shoe polish, cherry blossom. All right, all right, he's getting his own back for all the ages I'm calling him. And of course mine's starting to go a wee bit grey. 30 years ago. Right enough of this before they throw me off the mountain. Right, shall we head back down, we'll report back when we're back down. Whether it's the views or the elation of getting to the top or the exercise for mind and body that makes us addicted, I really don't know, the endorphins, the hormones, but on a day like today you can really see why we do and other people get addicted to these places, they are doobie jacket on because they were going to make me go and go for a swim. Thankfully they'd left the rope in the car, you didn't rub them in rope to abseil into didn't you? Aye well, they hadn't thought it through. I'm feeling, how are you guys feeling? You were up early yesterday and to the hill so. Fresh. You're fresh, I'm knackered. Fresh. But it was good fun wasn't it? The addiction got us up there and this is something special and it's in cloud now if you can see it. The top's in cloud, so we did get a view at the top didn't we? Yep, so that's the, come back to your addiction theme, that's a rat fed for a wee while. The rat is fed for a wee while, so yeah we're gonna head off, we're gonna head, I'm gonna head for a snooze in the van actually, so stay classy eh? Sky, stay classy, stay classy Sky, we'll see you in the next one. Bye. So with that our little trip is over, but as soon as that's finished our minds were wandering on to our next adventure. What were we going to do next? When were we going to get our next hit of the mountains? Anyway here's a wee schematic of the route we took today. I hope you enjoyed the video, thanks for watching and as always stay safe out there and I'll see you next week for another adventure.