Thursday 23 June 2011

The Warrior's Stack

We approached the St Kilda group trom the north east, arriving first at Stac an Armin (the warrior's stack) which is just to the north of Boreray.


As we were to repeatedly discover, everything about St Kilda is on a huge scale.  We got closer and the Stac got bigger....




At 196 metres high it's claimed to be the highest sea stack in the British Isles.  Incredible as it seems, the St Kildans not only visited this stack to harvest eggs and young birds, but also built around 80 stone stuctures known as "Cleitean" to store the catch and a bothy to live in during the harvest.




The potential of the Stac as a source of Gugas (young, unfledged Gannets) is obvious, the air is full of the birds and the Stac is plastered with the tens of thousands of gannets and their guano.



Murdani took Cuma around Stac an Armin and between the Stac and the island of Boreray.  From this angle, the bold shark's fin shape slashes skyward, the scale betrayed by the tiny specks of Gannets around the summit nearly two hundred metres above us.  This surely has to be one of the most dramatic sea stacks anywhere.



Our introduction to St Kilda had been a brush with a formidable Warrior in grey armour set off with dazzling white.

 We were impressed!

No comments:

Post a Comment