The Fairy Pools

A series of cascading pools and small waterfalls cutting down a valley from the Cuillin mountains, the water impossibly clear and blue-green in the right light. Most people walk the lower section and turn back. We kept going, up and around the valley, which is how we found ourselves climbing in the rain while the sun was still out somewhere behind us.

The rainbow appeared over the pools below — a full arc, one of those ones that looks slightly unreal, like the landscape is performing. Zala stopped walking and we just stood there for a moment, wet, slightly out of breath, watching it.