Prison and Pinnacle
Minimum Time: 3hrs
Ascent: 1,200ft
Difficulty Level: 2 - Medium
Paths: Well-used path, 2 stiles
Landscape: Rock towers and pinnacles
Dog Friendliness: Keep on lead passing sheep, take care on cliff top
Parking: Lay-by, top of pass on Staffin-Uig road. Overflow parking at cemetery 0.25 mile (400m) on Staffin side (not available during funerals)
Public Toilets: Brogaig
Description:
The rocks of Scotland vary from ancient - about 400 million years - to a great deal older than that, but along the western edge is something quite different. The great eye of the Atlantic Ocean opened at a time that, geologically speaking, is this morning just before breakfast. A mere 60 million years ago, the mid-Atlantic ridge lay just off the Scottish coast. And all along that ridge, new seabed emerged in exotic and interesting volcanic rocks that now form the Arran granite, the basalt of Mull and Skye, and the Skye gabbro.
Lava Landscape. Stir together butter and sugar in a saucepan, take the mixture off the heat and it crystallises into fudge. But take the same ingredients and cool them quickly, by tipping them into cold water, for example, and you get the glassy solid we call toffee. Now take a basic silicaceous magma, let it cool over thousands of years deep inside a volcano, and youâll get the rough crystalline gabbro that featured on Walk 32. But let it erupt suddenly at the surface, and it congeals into basalt, which is black, shiny and slippery. It forms a completely different sort of scenery - that of northern Skye. Basalt lava is a slippery liquid, like milk rather than treacle. This makes it quite different from the lumpy rhyolite lava that formed Glen Coe and the craggy side of Ben Nevis. Basalt lava spreads in wide, shallow layers across the country. After erosion, you get a flat-topped landscape, with long low cliffs at the edges and wide grassy plateaux. Macleodâs Tables and Dun Caan on Raasay (see Walk 36) are lava-layer hills. North of Portree, the lava flowed out over older, softer rocks of Jurassic (dinosaur) age. All along the Trotternish peninsula, the sea has been steadily removing those softer rocks, and the basalt above has been breaking off in hill-sized chunks and slipping downhill and eastwards. The chunks lean over, split apart and erode: the result is some extraordinary scenery, of which the queerest is the Quiraing. Some of its rock forms, with intriguing names such as The Prison, The Needle and the Fingalian Slab, have been a tourist must-see since Victorian times. As a result, a wide, well-made path leads below these pinnacles, then back along the top. Here you will find a gently undulating lawn, which would be quite suitable for a spot of croquet, thatâs called The Table. Spread your picnic cloth on The Table, and then peep out between the rock architecture to the Sound of Raasay and the distant hills of Torridon.
While you're there: Kilt Rock is seen from a clifftop viewpoint at Staffin. The warning (in Gaelic and five other languages) not to climb over the fence seems scarcely necessary as immediately beyond is a 500ft (152m) drop to the sea. Lean over to see the startling waterfall and columnar basalt cliff. Some of the six-sided blocks have fallen off and lie in the sea directly below the platform.
What to look out for: Basalt rock is alkaline and relatively rich in lime and minerals, so its soils support meadow flowers such as would more usually be seen in the English countryside. Yellow rattle, a flower of ancient pastureland, has been spotted here. Sron Vourlinn grows daisies like any suburban lawn. Global warming has encouraged the marbled white butterfly, blotchy brown and white, to move north from England as well.
Where to eat and drink: The Pieces of Ate cafÃ© at Brogaig, at the foot of the hill road, serves home-made snacks and soup from a small shack (closed on Sundays, as is most of the island). Magnificently sited below the Quiraing crags, the Flodigarry Hotel offers evening meals and Sunday lunch at its restaurant, bistro and terrace, specialising in local lobster and other seafood.
Directions:
A well-built path starts at a small green signpost opposite the lay-by, where you can park. The jagged tower of grass and rock on the skyline is The Prison. The path crosses over the steep landslip slope towards it, with an awkward crossing of a small stream gully on bare rock and then passes a small waterfall high above and heads to the right, rather than up into a rocky gap. It turns uphill into the wide col to the left of The Prison. 2 The main path does not drop, but goes forward, slightly uphill, crossing a new fence at a stile and then dodging below a crag foot. It crosses the foot of steep ground, then passes above a small peat pool. Ignore a path forking down right; the main path slants up to the left into a col where an old wall runs across. 3 The path descends into a landslip valley that runs across rather than down the hillside, then slants up left to a col with a stile. 4 Cross and turn right for the excursion to Sron Vourlinn. Follow the crest over a slightly rocky section with a short descent beyond, then join the main path along a grassy meadow with a very sudden edge on the right. After the highest point, continue slightly downhill to the north top. Here you can see that the land is still slipping, with a crevasse beside the cliff edge where another narrow section is shortly to peel away. The shelter of the rock crevice grows rock rose, rowan and valerian. 5 Return to the col with the stile (Point 4) and continue uphill. The drops are now on your left, as you look down towards the pinnacles surrounding The Table. After passing broken ground on the right, you come to a fallen wall, part of which appears from below as a cairn. The path continues next to the cliff edge on the left; you can fork off right, directly uphill, to the summit trig point on Meall na Suiramach. 6 Follow a broad faint path slightly downhill to a cairn at the cliff edge. You now look straight down on to The Table, 100ft (30m) below. Turn right on the wide path alongside the crag drop. After 0.25 mile (400m) as the path steepens, youâll see a fence on your right with a kissing gate. Once through this, the path becomes much clearer, contouring across the steep slope of Maoladh Mor. Above the car park, it turns straight downhill for a final ascent.
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