Skye

Skye is breathtakingly beautiful and regardless of the weather, an ideal place to walk. There are one or two excellent hotels as well as the usual tourist traps, smelling of stale cabbage and fully decorated in the worst possible tartan taste.

We went just after Easter, so the school holidays were over and the crowds we expected did not materialise. We had the coral beach all to ourselves; strange to be sunbathing in Scotland in April! Our arrival on the island was not a surprise as, when asking directions to the farm to collect the keys for our cottage, we were greeted with: "Oh, you must be the young couple from Edinburgh. Mrs McLeod is expecting you."

Further evidence of the rather insular approach to life was Mrs McLeod's admonition to avoid hanging out any washing on the Sabbath. I assured her that laundry was not top of my holiday priorities and she seemed happy enough. I did not feel it necessary to warn her that we were there purely to indulge in a decadent over-consumption of alcohol, but would she have cared...as long as it was within the confines of the cottage?

We came equipped with food and enough Rioja to last a week, fully expecting a cosy time by the open fire, reading as the rain poured down outside. Instead we spent all day walking in the sunshine.

Perhaps the most bizarre thing was the unavailability of fresh milk anywhere on the island, only UHT!