Cycle of life

With a twinkle in his eye, the late Sir Iain Noble loved to imply he was making moonshine at his Gaelic Whiskies company by the Sound of Sleat on the southern tip of Skye. “I can neither confirm nor deny that my whiskies are made on the island,” he would tell people of Tè Bheag, (‘a wee dram’) and Poit Dhubh (literally a ‘black pot’ – meaning an illicit still).

Sir Iain died in 2010 with unfulfilled dreams of distilling whisky in a derelict steading overlooking the sea. Seven years later, after a stunning restoration job, the building became the Torabhaig distillery. His name lives on as the wash still that stands toe to toe with the spirit still named after his wife. I was here with Richard, Unfiltered’s editor, and my friend Aidan, on a two-wheeled Hebridean adventure from Skye to Stornoway taking in the distilleries of Torabhaig, Raasay and the Isle of Harris.

Cycling and whisky may seem an unlikely marriage, and my younger self would have scoffed at the idea. Two wheels were for getting around town, while bagging distilleries was best done by car, or so I thought. That all changed on a whisky tour from Campbeltown to Fort William via Islay, Jura and Mull with Aidan and some other friends six years ago. As an urban cyclist who had never done it for pleasure, I was completely hooked, and it led to us setting up Saddle Grape & Grain to take similar groups all over the Highlands and islands and across Ireland.

Exposed to the elements, you feel part of the landscape on a bike, soaking up the views, smells and endless fresh air. Climbing hills can be tough, but there’s always the reward of freewheeling the other side, sometimes for miles. And every evening there’s that joyous sense of release – to swap tired limbs for a delicious pint, a bowl of langoustines and a well-earned dram.

So, it felt good being back in the saddle on Skye, though none of us was desperate to leave the warmth of Torabhaig, where our guide Anne was explaining how it was a real community endeavour. We met Neil, one of the nine distillers, who’d been the local bin man for years, and Davy, who had been a roofer on the island. As Neil Mathieson, MD of the parent company Mossburn Distillers, told me later, the team was recruited by placing an ad in “the local rag”. “People drove down, knocked on the door, and said ‘when can we start?’” he said. “We set an interview date, they all came along and we employed them all. They had no idea how to make whisky,” he says, laughing at the memory. But they’ve all learnt on the job, especially during the one month a year when they make their Journeyman’s Dram, using their own recipe and choosing everything from the strain of yeast to the type of cask. How many distillers have that kind of freedom, you wonder?

It was time to give in to the wild embrace of Kathleen, who was blowing a hoolie outside. The Met Office had been warning about the imminent arrival of this new storm from Ireland, and she didn’t disappoint. That evening, Richard and I met her face-on as we inched our way back from the Eilean Iarmain pub on foot for three miles back to our hotel. Crawling into bed at Toravaig House, just across from the distillery, I slept like the dead.

After breakfast, we set off to cycle a 19-mile loop to the other side of the Sleat Peninsula, past old Viking settlements like Tarskavaig and Tokavaig. We had the single-track to ourselves as we climbed and dipped in the dappled sunlight, trying our best to avoid the wrath of Kathleen. Yet back on the road to Broadford she became the friendliest of storms, propelling us along such that our feet barely touched the pedals.