The spelling varies, the incorrect spelling "Heaste" (created by confusion with the English word ‘haste’, with which it rhymes exactly), then there is the more correct one "Heast" without the bogus final e and finally in first place we have the correct Gàidhlig "
Heasta", which thank goodness is what it now says on the village sign. The maps randomly are distributed between the three, so you might have to try all the forms good and bad. The word is not Gàidhlig but old Norse, as are so many of the local place names, Norse having been spoken very widely before it died out in favour of Gàidhlig. I suspect strongly that it means "high stead(ing)" as the old village is very high up, half way up a mountain side. The words I chose there for the translation are those same words in English that are the equivalents in the original, in English's North Germanic cousin, Norse. A friend of my wife’s is a native Icelandic speaker so I could get him to advise me. Could do a swap because he loves Skye placenames but the Gaels have mangled the Old Norse when converting them into the complex Gàidhlig spelling system which is like an encoding, so Magnus cannot make the names out when he sees them written since unlike me he does not read Gàidhlig.
I looked up the base station to the east on the other side of the valley using a very comprehensive base station map web site, mastdata.com and see
the relevant basestation which is looked up by using the post code IV49 9BN. That post code is not very useful as it plonks you on number 6 in the village way down the hill to the south of us, whereas I am on the northernmost edge of the village, the very
first house and highest up the bank rising from the atlantic which is to the south of us. Many maps have my wife’s business marked, which is Skye Shepherd Huts, so that may help you pinpoint it. Otherwise where the northernmost stream crosses under the road on that rise you may well see faintly a short driveway coming of to the left, and that is me. As you go further north out of the village you continue to climb and the coverage supposedly gets better, approaching "indoor" rating. There was a thread some years ago with pictures because I was asking questions about the physical phone line and wanted people to be able to see what we were talking about, so thank you google street view. Perhaps someone could find that old thread.
