Bornesketaig seemed like a bit of an after thought in the Skye guide book. It is on the last page, there are three routes and none of them were thought to be good enough to get a star. The book described the crag as ‘rather vegetated’ so over the years I had made no attempt to visit it.

The crag made an appearance on a Gaelic TV programme I was watching, so I asked Mark Hudson about it but he wasn’t very complimentary about the climbing, Mark is writing up the sea cliffs for the next Skye guide book.

Last year we were on a rare thing-a family holiday so were staying on Skye despite the poor weather, one day driving past Bornesketaig we decided to have a look. I really liked the place the cliffs were long and there were plenty of fine interesting features pillars, arches and little caves.

Back at base I had a look at Derek Cooper’s Skye book which reckoned on ‘Born a Skee Tech’, always handy to know how to pronounce places. They should erect a sign to the west of Torridon ‘Welcome to Dee A Beg’.

After the holiday I was soon itching to get back. It turned out that Stephen Kennedy had also been there with Bob Hamilton, so when he saw a picture of the crag on my web site he said he would join us if we went back.

There was loads to do so I tried to organise a gathering so that we could get a pile of routes done. Morris MacLeod and Bruce Taylor decided getting gripped on wet Cuillin basalt would be a better option and Neil Smith was working in the North Sea.

I have to admit that the first couple of routes we did were disappointing because the tops were fairly unstable. I found out later from Mark that Bill Birkett had started cleaning a route but it was so loose that he had given up, and Roger Brown had also climbed there but not returned.

Stephen turned up with Bob but they didn’t want to second a route we had just done, weirdos. They were uncharacteristically silent. Stephen finally revealed that he had abseiled down a short cliff to the west, a block had dislodged above him hitting him and nearly knocking him out. He was lucky to stay on the rope and to be wearing a helmet (which had saved his life and now needed to be replaced).

We did one of the best looking lines at the crag, I decided at a later date to call it ‘Power to Believe’, the name of a track by some hippies called King Crimson that I had been listening to.

Stephen didn’t climb it as he was still seeing stars and his shoulder was aching, he didn’t think he would be able to drive home but he managed to take some photos.

I returned to ‘Born a Skee Tech’ this year with Bruce and climbed the back of the pillar next to ‘Power to Believe’. It was such a fine feature that we tried to film it, I think the camera put me off-any excuse! It was fine once the camera was switched off. I called it ‘Eyes Wide Open’ which is another King Crimson song. It was my first climbing video so not great but you can hear the dreaded fulmars!     watch

I keep going back which is odd as it faces north is covered in fulmars and the tops are very loose.

At the time of writing the first 14 photos in Skye are of Bornesketaig