Highlands and Islands Dispatch

Honey, I’ve got a bad case of the Hebrides

Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,

The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth;

Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,

The hills of the Highlands for ever I love. — Robert Burns

It was, without a doubt, the most beautiful place I’d ever vomited. Out across the boggy heather in the foreground, the lapping basaltic tidal pools below, and the shimmering, sun-dappled Tulum Bay, was the backlit silhouette of Duntulm Castle, guardian of this northern tip of the Isle of Skye. I was lying in a fetal position on a raised mound of grass-covered rock, having just violently expelled the meager apple and oat biscuit I had consumed an hour earlier. The light breeze and warm afternoon sun lent an odd serenity to my otherwise miserable scene and it was only my awareness that we needed to walk two miles back to our cottage that kept me from simply falling asleep right there.