No trickery here, just natural light on three landscape formations. Strangely, the trees in the foreground compliment the two notches in the hill tops. The image was taken on a walk passed a hamlet called Lealt, on the NE part of Skye, just a few miles from Staffin Bay. This was our third attempt at this walk – the first was cancelled because of strong winds, the second because of rain and strong winds. Both times we hardly made it over the cattle grid some 100 metres from the road.
Walk in a straight line inland and keeping the river to your left and soon you’ll find a wee lochan with a convenient picnic table. Here was the mine which supplied Diotomite. Beside the rough road and to the right is a dismantled railway, which was a 2 foot gauge tramway. In a description from 1905 the line was worked by manpower and gravity, later it appears to have had a locomotive.
It ran from Loch Cuithir (where the Diatomite was extracted from the lochbed and initially dried on wire nets) to the clifftop at Invertote where there were storehouses. At the foot of the cliff was a drying and grinding factory where the diatomite was kiln dried, ground and calcined (roasted). An extension of the line ran from the factories to the pier. A second facility carried Diatomite from Loch Valerain by aerial ropeway to Staffin Bay. Between these the Skye Diatomite company extracted 2000 tons. Today the line and works are closed and ruined and Loch Valerain is worked out.
The Diatomite was converted into kieselguhr which was used by Nobel Explosives at Ardeer to mix with nitroglycerine to make Dynamite. Diatomite has many uses and is still prepared in many parts of the world.