............‘What the hell are those black clouds?’
I remember whispering to Katie, for out here any decibel higher would have seemed unnatural. My heart actually stopped. I decided there and then we were leaving, for those black clouds I refer to, were swarms of midges; huge, locust like swarms of blood sucking beasts. Those of you not familiar with the Scottish legend that is the midge I warn you do not look it up; for the facts and stories can only frighten you to an early grave. The Jaws sound track was echoing loudly in my head.

Against every once of logic, she got me out of the car but not before I covered up ever inch of skin and was properly loaded with jumbo size cans of insect repellent. I had one in each hand. I was a ninja ready to strike. This of course left Katie, who never got bitten, to bring in dinner, shower stuff and sleeping bags from the car. We bolted as fast as we could towards the cabin, flinging open the door and slamming tightly.

I let out a strangled scream.

They were inside too. The swarms were everywhere. I was stuck in a horror movie and there was no way out.

In pulled myself together and we decided to stay as we were, determined to prove we were capable of surviving anything. We took a shower (quickly. Midges kept biting my bum) then huddled ourselves into jeans, woolly socks over them, fleece tucked into them, scarfs to our noses and hats to our eyes. Oh and I wore gloves too. The rest of the people there barely spoke any English and were gloomily sucking down on a dinner of sandwiches and beer when we tried to explain we were going to spray the cabin we replellent and not to open any doors or windows. It struck me as strange at the time that these people were ghostly in appearance and action and barely noticed or acknowledged our presence. Another couple, who were as uncomfortable as we were, didn’t even stay the night and left in their car determined to make the last ferry. The place had a haunted air to it. I shrugged it off however, and we got to work.

Turns out, they didn’t acknowledge us. Either that or they didn’t understand us and after the man in the bed beside me started masturbating in his sleep, I shook Katie awake and we retired to the living room. I wanted to go home.

In the living room was a man we hadn’t seen before. A very handsome man I first assumed was a hallucination I was so desperate to be rescued, but he wasn’t. He was real, and had just gotten back from and day cycling around Skye. He was as desperate to get off the god forsaken island as we were.

He told us we shouldn’t be there alone and first thing, we were to get in our car, and leave. Feeling comforted and safe, we spent the night chatting to him by the fire (only I had managed to light), and before we knew it, it was dawn.

Three days later, tired, grumpy and very dirty we navigated our way through Edinburgh trying to find a hotel with an empty room. After our awful night we had decided to go to a holiday camp, another Island over, where Katie had gone on holidays as a child. The only problem was, thanks to the ferry timetable, we were stuck there for two days, with only the sheep for company. We had also finished all our food and there wasn’t a shop on the island. Somehow we managed not to kill each other.

Driving in Edinburgh is a nightmare. Thinking back now we were delusional, as after having lived in Edinburgh, it really is quite simple. Don’t take a car anywhere. After being sworn and whistled at by so many taxi drivers I can’t remember, my nerves were shot. We were going home.

Sitting in a restaurant in Glasgow and shovelling great mouthfuls of pasta into our mouths (people were staring at us, but not because of that. We were still wearing wellie boots) I reached over the bar and grabbed a paper. Flicking through absently I acknowledged some of the news we had missed on our travels, and repeated verbatim to Katie, who was so engrossed in a chocolate fudge cake by this point I don’t think she heard me. Then something caught my eye.

Somebody had gone missing from that hostel in Skye the day we were there. They gave a description. It was the man from the living room. He had gone missing the day before we arrived. All they had found were his possessions. Apparently it was unusual, as it was often females who went missing up that area. Apparently that hostel was deemed one of the most dangerous in Scotland. My mouth dropped open. You’d think somebody could have warned us. The flaw in our plan: we were a bit too naive for this 'roughing it' stuff.



* I assume that the paper printed the dates wrong however it was the only paper that wrote anything about this particular mystery. We never did solve it.