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Fieldnotes by Forgetful Cat

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Dun Osdale (Broch)

Easily accessible from the B884, just at the Uignish turn off. Easiest place to park is just down the turn off, then go through/over gate across B884. Excellent views across to Dunvegan. Not as well preserved as Dun Beag, but you can make out the double walls and what look like chambers within them.

Some indications of an enclosure behind the broch, but whether contemporary with it, I do not know.

Claigan Souterrain

Although some references say that this site is hard to find/access, we had no problems. It is easily reachable from the parking place for the 'coral beaches'. Most visitors to Skye will go to these, and the site is worth the 1 mile or so detour.

The entrance is a bit intimidating, but once through, the tunnel opens out, and is crouching height (I'm 6' tall). Lined with stones, and extending some 10m, narrowing to the end, the structure is an engineering achievement.

This is the first souterrain I've visited, and I felt that the explanation of them as refuges from raiders seemed unliklely. You couldn't have a group of people sheltering here for more than an hour or two before it became uncomfortable to say the least.

In 'Places Of Power' Paul Devereux suggests that the Cornish Fogous may have had ritual functions, and one could certainly imagine, as one exits this site through the constricted opening, that it was used for ritual involving a second birth from the earth. More prosaically, having visited on a scorching June day, I wondered whether it was in fact some sort of early icehouse.
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