Locomotoring

They say that the Scottish landscape is dotted with sheep. And they are right. From Inverness, we had headed out to Uig in the Isle of Skye. Apparently, the tourism in Isle of Skye has skyrocketed. The culprit is modernization, the island got connected to the mainland by a bridge on A87 in 1995, replacing the ferry-only option. And who would blame the high rate of tourism. Isle of Skye with its perpetual fog laden craggy landscape looks otherwordly.

Skye has ~1000 hours of sunshine annually. That is about a 1 in 8 chance of sunshine. Of course we had taken our California weather with us to Skye for our three days. While it was hot in Perthshire, Skye remained relatively cool during our stay. The first thing that strikes your eye is the green moss like cover on the mountains. As your eyes adjust to the green, you start noticing the white dots. On closer inspection, they appear to move. Soon you realize that you are looking at sheep. They are practically everywhere on the island.

I read in Peter May’s Lewis trilogy that sheep are not too smart and they startle easy. They also like camping on the road to avoid the midges. And one has to be careful driving, so as not to catch a startled sheep. There might have been time when sheep owners tried building barricades for their flock. But they try no more. How else would the sheep be everywhere? I wondered if they are even keeping counts. We noticed some with colors on them – blues and oranges and reds. I guess one needs no more than five colors (link). We didn’t catch any startled sheep. We did catch a number of adorable ones.

If you are hiking on the island, chances are, you are walking with the sheep. You have to especially watch out for their poop. Sheep are everywhere and so is their poop. Scotland is a land of signs. Outside of India, I have never seen as many signs in my life (did we inherit the habit from the Brits?). You can bet seeing a sign forbidding you to step on a daisy. I read that to mean they want you to be careful so you are not stepping on sheep poop.

Skye hikes are popular. There are hundreds of others with you on hikes. But they are surprisingly quiet. I had a near profound experience in Inverness the day before we entered Skye. We were at the Chanonry Point, a piece of land that juts out into the Moray Firth, a piece of land popular with humans for dolphin spotting. There were dozens of us shivering in the wind, waiting for dolphin sighting. And a solitary dolphin did appear and goofed around for over half and hour and amused us all. We all watched. Quietly. Most of us took photos. Quietly. Even the kids watched quietly. I could not but remember my Antarctica trip where the humans chattered louder than that penguins, non-stop.

In the Scottish highlands, even when you don’t see the sheep, you hear them. Particularly the young ones who are persistently calling out their mothers. Baa, Baa, …. the only sound that you hear on your walks along with the sound of the wind.