Cuillins 'About To Be Sold'

It's going, going, almost gone on Skye as the Cuillins are reportedly about to be sold to a mystery American buyer for a knockdown £6 million.

It's the culmination of a saga which began when local clan chieftain John MacLeod of MacLeod put up his estate for sale in order to raise funds for the repair of the roof of his crumbling ancestral pile, Dunvegan Castle.

The original asking price for the estate was a whopping 10 million squid back in 2000, since then the potential sale has been wreathed in controversy as thick as the Skye mists as first the Crown Estate believed that MacLeod did not have title to the mountains, but then backed down from a legal battle after deciding it had little chance of success.

Meanwhile, the National Trust for Scotland valued the estate at between £2m and £2.5m and bemoaned the fact that the ownership of the estate looked likely to be decided purely on price, but declined to become involved in a bidding war.

The good news is that even if and when the sale goes through, it seems unlikely that access to the Cuillins for walkers and climbers will be affected. The potential buyer is described in today's Telegraph newspaper as 'a land collector'. Beats stamps really...

Telegraph news story