At this time of the year, leaving on the early ferry means setting out before light to drive across the islands.
Today the sky is cloud-covered and there’s little to be seen except the beams of the headlights cutting through the darkness and illuminating the series of place signs along the stretches of single track road. Buffeting wind holds the promise of a lively crossing.
This morning may be ordinary enough, but there are times when, once the rush to get out of the house on time is over, the drive has moments of magic.
There are cold, clear mornings with skies still star-filled and the moon lighting the lochs to lakes of silver in a darker landscape.
As the road curves along the causeways that link the islands, the sea too takes up the brightness of the moon on its shifting surface.
On other mornings there is mist – not a thick, damp, clinging mist, but a series of ethereal horizontal swathes floating above the damp hollows, the watercourses and low lying places.
It hangs above the road, rising to not much more than head height, skein after skein, like the finest, palest smoke. Rather than the car being in motion, it seems as if the mist is rushing onwards, briefly blanketing the windscreen, then parting and whipping past the windows.
But most treasured of all these mornings is the memory of a glorious pre-sunrise over Loch Bi, when a great diagonal stroke of blazing colour, oranges and scarlets and burning reds reached halfway into a sky of indigo and purple.
Below, the mirror-still waters of the loch took up the colour and reflected it skyward once again. The far shore showed as a sharp silhouette of black, while beyond that, in the far, far distance, some of Skye’s highest peaks were even visible.
The ferry dash put aside for a moment, I stopped and stepped out into the early morning chill … and from somewhere out on the loch’s tranquil waters the faint music of whooper swans could be heard on the morning air.
