We'll have the best table in the house please

Up early is pretty much the only way to get onto the Quiraing before it becomes ridiculously busy (at the car park at least, probably fewer than half who turn up seem to actually go and walk any distance). The Trotternish Ridge is a dramatic landscape (which served as a backdrop to a fair chunk of the film Stardust - that being the Michelle Pfeiffer sort-of-fairytale movie, not the David Essex pop star thingy), and deserves further exploration.

So we plunged into the Quiraing. Or up and into. The main path passes below the crags and rocks and scree, looping round onto the boggy path then above the cliffs. But in between, should you care to venture, is a wonderful, still, slightly eerie little world. Carry on further in and you wind up on the fantastically incongruous Table - a grass-topped plateau, which while not quite as pancake flat as the picture suggests, does, apparently, host shinty matches (they must lose an awful lot of balls...).

Last night on Skye, and hoping there's a repeat of even the very, very faint Aurora Borealis that made an appearance last night.

Tomorrow, early (ish) ferry to Tarbert and a week on Harris, which I think I'm looking forward to more than Mel as she's really fallen in love with Skye again, even if it is still a little too busy in comparison to the Outers.