After a wet and windy day 1, we arose on Day 3, opened the window and guess what, The rain was bettering down with dense low cloud over the town of Portree, not looking good.
After devouring a hearty Scottish breakfast and a discussion to agree what we were going to do and where we were heading too, it was a quick change and making sure the waterproof clothing was in the car.
Initially we headed north to see what the conditions were like at the Old Man of Storr or at the Quiraing, we didn’t get far before our worst fears were granted, everywhere about 500 feet above the road was socked in, absolutely no point id going any further.
I decided to make a stop at the Brides Veil waterfalls as these are right beside the road. Although conditions were far from ideal.
I donned the wet weather jacket, trousers, and wellies and set off towards the falls, after 3 or 4 steps my foot disappeared into a boggy abyss, it’s a good job I had wellies on as my whole foot was well below the surface. I pulled my foot out managing to keep my foot in the wellie, and began trudging up the hill towards the falls. I soon realised that there was no way I was going to get high up and close to the falls as the wind was howling up the coast and was simply too strong for me to set up the tripod so I chose a view from further down the river.
Setting up for the photo was murder, everything had to be dried constantly, the camera, lens and filters. I got a couple of images form here nothing special but I did use differing shutter speeds to try and get the best movement in the water.
Once back in the car and having removed my wet clothing, we decided to take a run to Armadale where the ferry form Mallaig arrives, no particular reason for this choice but it’s a area of the island that we had not visited so off we set.
The weather was awful, so the journey was a bit if a non-event, however when we returned I decided to get a image of the Skye Bridge that would (hopefully) capture the awful weather conditions, and I got another soaking for my sins. I have converted this image to black and white as I feel it helps show how wet and dark the day was.
On the way home I stopped at the Eas a’ Bhradain Waterfalls to try and take a photo, it was very dark and the rain was still coming down in bucketful’s, again once I got the camera out of the bag, everything had to be dries constantly, it is so infuriating that the water gets between the filters and you then have to take them all off, dry them and re-assemble them. The photos were nothing fantastic, but to be honest the conditions ensured that this would be the case.
As we were driving towards the Sligachan bridge the light was so good, dark skies with the river in full flow, it was surprising how much water was now clattering down the river to what it was like when we passed by a few hours earlier. Against this darkness the white tips of the rapids in the river were really standing out against the bleak background.
There was no way that I was leaving the car to walking to the bridge as I would have been drowned, so I maneuvered the car to a place where I could slap on my 200 mm lens, rest this on the open window and get the photograph this way.
After this we retreated to the Hotel for a bite to eat and a couple of shandies.
A recap of the day was several hours spend driving about for no real reason, getting wet several times and securing some average photos, but as we sat in the bar, we checked the forecast for the next day, this looked promising, sunny spells, low wind and light showers, so we made our provisional choice to go the Elgol first thing in the morning on what would be our 4th day on the Island.
