Neist Point

Neist Point is the most westerly point on Skye and has a spectacular lighthouse and also good sea fishing at high tide.

It is not possible to drive all the way to the lighthouse and the final half mile or so is a very steep descent down concrete steps. At one time the lighthouse had a keeper and it was possible to go inside the lighthouse and climb up to the lamp room. Sadly, the silicon chip has changed all that and now British lighthouses are firmly locked up, controlled by computers and microwave dishes, and keeperless.

Be warned that the sea cliffs are very dangerous. The cliffs are high, the sea currents are strong and the waters deep. Due to the fissured and rocky nature of the sea bed, it can be an expensive place to fish in terms of lost tackle.


The lighthouse from the sea cliffs	The lighthouse from the cliffs to the right of the car park at the end of the road

Retrieving snagged fishing tackle (I must have been mad!)	Mackerel

The lightbulb and huge fresnel magnifying lenses. Sadly the lighthouse is no longer open to the public.	The view from the lamp room in 1978.

I don't know if the offending item is still there, because I have not been down to the light for a while, but it was in 1996 that the strange episode of the overnight cemetery occurred.

We were walking down to the light when I noticed that a graveyard had appeared by the lighthouse. It hadn't been there the year before! We were wondering what terrible epidemic could have befallen such a remote part of Skye and it was only when we got down to the gravestones, we found out what was going on:

A film company had made a film there and the graveyard had been constructed by the film company as part of the set and left there after they departed. I think both the building and the leaving behind were done without planning permission, but the local authority wasn't over enthusiastic about mounting an operation in a remote and difficultly accessible part of the island to clear away the offending (plastic!) graveyard.

In November 2000 Mark Levy of New York City informed me that he and his wife, Celine, had visited the site and the cemetery has now disappeared again!

It was a strange episode in the life of a lighthouse though.......


The worlds only polystyrene cemetery?	The sign they left behind, but officialdom was not best pleased!

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