At the top of the ridge at the Quiraing Walk on the Isle of Skye in Scotland, I stopped breathing for a couple of seconds.

From where I stood, I could trace the route we took across the valley, which expands all the way to the ocean, where the silvery blue sea met the blue sky above. The day we hiked the Quiraing was the most un-Scottish day, filled with sunshine and deep blue sky.

So I rested on a rock, inhaled and breathed in all in.

It’s been a while since I last blogged, and you may remember me mention personal issues that I’ve had to deal with. I have been lacking both inspiration and motivation to write or do other stuff; I couldn’t sleep much and the drain on my normal self was evident to some. My mind was on overdrive and I needed to get away.

This trip came at the right time.

Before I got all obsessed with cycling, I’ve always been a hiker. Being a mountain person, I am drawn to the hills, on foot, where I can hear the trickling of the streams, the crunch of grass underfoot, touch the trees, the rocks, see life big and small that live among the shrubbery and smell the fresh scent of nature.

The wild calls out to me and Scotland’s Isle of Skye is a stunning location for me to rekindle my love of the outdoors. Splashing through rocky streams and squishing past soggy bogs, I let my muddy boots lead me forwards and on-wards.

The landscape of Skye is majestic, and not to dissimilar to places like Iceland where volcanic mountains slide dramatically into the flat plain valleys that leads to the sea. The hikes chosen by the group were easy (for me) but scenic, and taking advantage of my own age (I was the youngest by far!), I often ran ahead to ‘scout’ for hazards as well as to take some alone time to just take in the views around me.

They say the Isle of Skye is the Isle of Fairies, and one of the most popular story tells of the romantic tale of the chief of the MacLeods clan who married a fairy princess, but they were only allowed to be together for a year and a day after the wedding as she needed to go back to her own world to rule. The couple parted at what’s referred to today as the ‘Fairy Bridge’. Just as the princess was about to cross over to her magical world, the couple’s new born child began to cry, and on hearing the crying, she came back to sooth her son by wrapping her shawl around him.

This shawl became the fairy flag, and the MacLeods clan still has it in the clan’s Dunvegan Castle.

As I stepped my way through Skye, fairies seems to come out everywhere I turn. I came across pockets of thick green moss cover up rocks and tree roots, glistened by the moisture from the ground are said to be where fairies live, and whenever I encounter such environment I let my imagination run wild and step through in search of these mythical creatures.

It’s easy to see by being among the trees how the ancient cultures could believe in fairies.

We were on Skye for 6 days, and I was re-energised by each day’s hike.

When you are hiking, it’s never really about the destination, but the journey. The rhythm and the pace of the hike gave me the time to think, to reflect and to rediscover what is more important to me.

Hiking provokes all my senses, wakes me up, make me aware of the world around me. Away from the modern comforts and noise, in the wild, I felt free.

Skye has brought out the wild child in me, and it’s the most wonderful feeling.