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Saturday, April 27, 2013

Exploring the "wall of the tombstones" and "the den of the black revenge" on Muck.

At the far side of Camus Mor (on Muck's south coast) we came to the impenetrable barrier of the cliff  face of An Leachdach, which roughly translated means "wall of the tombstones".

 There are a number of caves in this otherwise sheer rock face. We chose not to explore them but due to the sheer nature of the rock it was possible to paddle very close to the cliffs....

 ...despite the size of the swell.

 At the south end of the cliffs there is a collapsed cave system, which is now an inlet called...

 ...Sloc na Dubhaich. A loose translation might be "Den of the Black Revenge" though it is currently known as  "The Witch's Cauldron" Whatever it might be called, we only took a sideways look into the foam filled gully and pressed on towards...

...the reef of Bogha na Fionn-aird. Despite the black rocks, we could see why this was called "reef of the white point". For all their poetic sounds, Gaelic names are usually pretty literal  Our paddle was nearly over and as Ian and I surfed some swells through the gap, we considered that we had just paddled one of the finest parts of coastline in the west of Scotland.