Rat Race The Isles - day 3. North Uist and Harris - the Skye boat song

 (With apologies to John Denver)

"My bags are packed, my kit check done

The feet all taped, my quads are gone

My Garmin's got me up at half past five

But the dawn is breaking

It's early morn, the breakfast's waiting

The minibus horn

Forty miles of bog and I could die

But 10k is all today

Ferries don't like wind, they say

Harris looks a tricky place to go

So I'm heaving on a Calmac

Across the sea to Skye and back

Oh boy, I hate to go..."

We're not short of islands on this trip, as I may have mentioned. But we've suddenly acquired another one. There aren't many people who can claim they've accidentally been to Skye, but that number has just gone up a few.

The original plan (see the maps above) was to run 26km to the ferry terminal on Berneray, and then take the ferry to Leverburgh, with another 10k the other side to finish off. However, the wind was forecast to increase around lunchtime, and that ferry is currently running on three engines out of four. Apparently, its not safe to do that in the forecast wind conditions, so Calmac cancelled it. So did the wind, but that didn't seem to change Calmac's mind.

Instead we ran 12k to Lochmaddy, and are now sailing to a different port on Harris via Skye. In order to try and get the last 10k in, they then need to transfer us back to Leverburgh an hour away, so we can finish the day, and then back to the accommodation. Congratulations to the Rat Race staff for handling the reroute - I think that was about plan D of the options they tried.

The first 12k included on of the great moments of the trip, though. Climbing the hill from yesterday's pub in the dawn, with a glorious view, the sun came up just at the moment a stag came to the skyline in front of us. I'd have paid quite a lot to have my DSLR camera and zoom with me at that moment, as the phone camera just doesn't capture it, but if you look hard you can see the stag in the picture:

That's a sight that will remain in my memory - it was perfect for the surroundings.

The rest of the run to the ferry terminal was flat and easy enough, and the Skye ferry does do excellent breakfast - or, more accurately, second breakfast. I'm not normally that hungry after 12k, but I might be making up for yesterday a bit.

What we saw of Skye we saw from the ferry - a fuelling stop and passengers off and on again, and then on our way to Harris - our third island of the day.

Once we landed, I opted out of driving an hour just to do a 10k, and instead took advantage of some downtime at the accommodation - and we also got a taste of the end of tomorrow's planned run, which I won't get as I'm hoping to get up to Stornoway tomorrow afternoon to catch up with Andy.