When you walk to the northwestern-most tip of the Isle of Skye you’ll eventually find the Lookout. And if you go in to the Lookout and take a look at the guest log and flip through a few pages, you’ll eventually find this melodramatic description of what it’s like to be at the Lookout:
"Today is a fine day, a fine day indeed, and the night bringeth we two stout chaps a rest deep and tranquil with a slightly brisk salt breeze fondling our nostril hairs. We gazed upon a horizon of ancient land that stretched in all direction, effulgent and fecund with millinea of stories embedded along the curvy shorelines and jagged peaks. We hath nire seen such beauty of comparison in all our blessed lives; the sheer benevolence of this view, this land, stirs a certain jovial expression from the depths of our breasts and therefore inspiring the notion to render only good and honorable deeds in our gift of life, as to waste not a moment to the slavery of contemporary societal regimes and agendas…"
The Lookout was built in 1928 for the Scottish coastguard but it was no longer in use by the 1970s and soon became a popular hangout for whale and bird watchers.
In 2005 a storm blew out the windows of the Lookout and it was renovated by the Mountain Bothy Association. A bothy is a basic shelter in the wilderness, left unlocked and available for anyone to use free of charge.
To get to the Bothy, you first pass "the old phone booth" along the main road which loops through the island. From there it's about an hour's walk. You're met by grazing cows and herds of baby lambs.
The Lookout is perched on a cliff overlooking the North Sea.
The Lookout is a great place to watch the sunset. But the best view is at dusk. The red and orange sky becomes a tender pink.
Below the cliff there is a peninsula where sheep are grazing. You see the sheepdog chasing the sheep back home.
You feel safe and warm inside. You light some candles and listen to the cold sound of the waves hitting the shore.
In the morning you wake up to the sound of scratching. It’s a bunch of cows rubbing against the Lookout to relieve an itch.
The Lookout was renovated in the memory of Dave Brown, "wilderness lover, anti-materialist, and guerrilla bookkeeper.” Dave would hike for weeks at a time in the north west of Scotland. Legend goes that he would go within 10 feet of a mountain summit before turning back, since reaching the top would give him the illusion of having conquered the mountain.
