Isle of Skye, Scotland

An Island near Harlosh on the Isle of Skye.

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The bedroom windows of the cottage we rented for a week on the Isle of Skye looked out on the Harlosh Peninsula where ruins, some dating to the Iron age (1200 – 800 BC), are being subsumed by the boggy vegetation that dominates the island. The peninsula is sandwiched between two saltwater lochs—essentially bays—leading to the North Atlantic. Ellen and I walked the peninsula to its tip, trying to keep our feet dry while not disturbing peacefully grazing sheep and stopping to explore old stone foundations. 

 

Skye is the largest of the Inner Hebrides, and it is connected to Scotland’s northwest coast by a short bridge, making access easy and encouraging tourism. The island is a collection of peninsulas anchored to the craggy Cuillin Mountains, a destination for climbers keen to traverse its serrated ridges or ascend its isolated spires when the weather isn’t too horrible, which isn’t very often. Even more than on mainland Scotland, Skye is a wet and windy place, with 59-79” of rain per year and even more in the higher peaks. One wonders how 3,000-4,000’ peaks can be the setting for so many gnarly mountaineering epics until you experience Scottish weather.

 

Skye’s history dates to Mesolithic times (7,000 BC), and the island has subsequently been occupied by Celtic tribes, Vikings, and Scottish Clans, most notably the MacLeods and the MacDonalds who were prone to getting violently into it with each other. More recently, the island has become a tourist destination and a second home for hale British retirees, but as recently as 2001, a third of the population still spoke Gaelic. 

Despite typical Isle of Skye weather, we enjoyed our week there before leaving to hike the West Highland Way, a topic for a later post. Photographs below are of our outings on Skye. I’ve included descriptions of our wanderings and a few words at the end about logistics, but there is plenty of information available online for anyone planning a trip. 

Ellen on the Harlosh Peninsula, where we stayed while on Skye.

The view east from the Harlosh Peninsula.

On our first full day on Skye we drove east and north from Harlosh through the capital town of Portree to the alarmingly large and full parking lot at the trailhead for the Quiraing Loop, one of the more popular hikes on the island. Despite its popularity, the hike begins from a winding one-lane road punctuated by "passing places" (small pull-outs) that we soon learned were common throughout Scotland. From the road, the trail ascends into the mist, tracing the top of a precipitous cliff overlooking (if you could see through the fog) a complicated jumble of landslide debris in the valley below where the return leg of the loop threads its way among rock formations. We suited up against the intermittent rain showers and headed out, defying our arid-land instinct to sit in the car and wait it out, which in Scotland might take weeks or years. Despite or even because of the weather, the hike was beautiful, even with all the people. 

Ellen hiking in the fog below on the Quiraing loop, one of the more popular hikes on Skye.

The Quiraing Loop.

Ellen on the Quiraing loop hiking through heather.

The view north towards the Old Man of Storr (not visible), a famous rock spire, from near the start of the Quiraing loop.

The weather seemed too inhospitable to hike high into the Cuillin Mountains, so instead we walked below them from a campground at Glenbrittle at the end of Loch Brittle to the tip of another peninsula called the Rubha an Dunain (means point of the little fort). The wind picked up as we got nearer to the point, eventually knocking us around enough to make it challenging to stay on the trail when we could find it. Despite the weather, this was one of our favorite days on Skye. The end of the peninsula was thick with ruins, and a small lake was connected to the sea by a manmade channel labeled "Viking Canal" on our maps. Although it isn't obvious to me why the Vikings would have needed to access the lake with their boats, apparently it served as a protected harbor, and Norse boat timbers carbon-dated to AD 1100 have been pulled from the water.

A stream flowing from the Cuillin Mountains to the sea.

Sheep are everywhere on Skye including on this remote peninsula.

Ellen working to keep her balance in 50 mph wind at the Viking Canal near the tip of a peninsula called the Rubha an Dunain near the southern end of the island. The canal linked a small loch with the sea.

The Viking Canal outlet to the sea.

The closest substantial settlement to our base in Harlosh was Dunvegan, and the nearby Dunvegan Castle has been home to the MacLeods for 800 years. They still live there, but parts of the castle are open to the public (for a price). We did the obligatory tour, but more compelling for us was a walk to the coast a few miles north of the castle to a small ruin called Fiadhairt and then onwards through a basalt-lined valley to the ocean.

An inlet off of Loch Dunvegan that we passed on a hike north of the Dunvegan Castle.

The ruin of a double-walled structure called Fiadhairt north of Dunvegan.

A microcosm of fern and moss on the stone wall of the Fiadhairt ruin.

Blooming heather on the Fiadhairt ruin.

A view of the Dunvegan Loch from the Dunvegan Castle, which has been occupied continuously by the MacLeods for 800 years. They were originally a dominant clan on Skye.

A cemetery near the town of Dunvegan.

We spent as little time in the capital city, Portree, as possible, since we didn't need any t-shirts or whisky, but we stopped there twice on our way to or from outings to eat and resupply at the Coop grocery store. The town is attractive, but it's crawling with tourists and busy with traffic.

The harbor at Portree, the largest town on Skye and its center of tourism.

Waterfront buildings in Portree.

The northernmost peninsula on Skye is called the Trotternish and it extends north from Portree past the Old Man of Storr and the Quiraing to a more remote area close to its tip. We visited a castle ruin there (Duntulm Castle) and then hiked to a bothy (shelter) overlooking Rubha Hunnish, the northern point of the peninsula, with views to the Outer Hebrides to the west. We returned to our car by hiking along the shore through bogs occupied by the ruins of old croft houses. Crofting is landholding system in which farmers rent and work small pieces of land, and crofting is still common today in Northwest Scotland.

A classic phone booth (with phone) along a rural road on the Trotternish Peninsula near the northern tip of Skye.

Ellen having lunch in a bothy with views across the North Atlantic to the Outer Hebrides.

Looking south along the coast of the Trotternish Peninsula.

Distillery visits are de rigueur in Scotland, so before we left the U.S., I scheduled a tour of the Talisker Distillery on Skye. Unfortunately, these tours are popular and bookings get filled, so we found ourselves sampling lightly peated Talisker scotch at 10:30 a.m. the day before we left Skye, which contributed to a less aggressive agenda that day than we had enjoyed during the rest of the our visit. Oddly, Skye is not a great place for a distillery except that it has an abundance of clear water, which is essential for making whisky (spelled without the 'e' in the U.K.). Barley doesn't grow well on Skye, so it is shipped in from Scotland's east coast after being dried (with heat and smoke from burning peat). Once distilled, the scotch is shipped out to age on the mainland. Still, the complexity of a distillery was fun to see, and the tasting at the end of the tour was engaging. 

An old boat along the shore near the town of Carbost, home of the Talisker Distillery.

Huge stills in the Talisker Distillery at Carbost.

Somewhat reluctantly we left Skye after a week to return our car to Glasgow and stage for an 8-day hike on the West Highland Way. As we drove towards the bridge connecting Skye to the mainland, rare glimpses of sunshine lit the Cuillin Mountains making them more enticing than they had been in fog and driving rain.

A last view into the Cuillin Mountains as we left Skye.

The road back to mainland Scotland where we were headed to hike in the Highlands.

Logistics

There's no end of information online about visiting the Isle of Skye, since it is one of the most popular destinations in Scotland, but I'll provide a few specifics here from our trip that might be useful.

Transportation: We rented a car (Europcar) in Edinburgh and drove to Skye. Exploring the island would be nearly impossible without a car, though there are some local buses and paid tours are popular with some travelers. The rail system is easy to use in Scotland, and in retrospect, it might have been easier and even cheaper to take a train to Fort William (or anywhere close to Skye) and rent a car there to minimize driving hassles (driving on the left side of narrow roads and all of that) and gasoline expenses.

Accommodation: There are an innumerable vacation rentals on Skye. Portree is the epicenter of tourism on the island and has the largest concentration of shops and restaurants. If that's appealing to you, you'll need to book well in advance of your trip because everything fills up early. Instead, we stayed in a quiet and lovely cottage at Harlosh called the Seascape Cottage, which you can book directly with the hosts (who are botanists!) or through Airbnb, etc.

Weather: We visited in September, and it rained every day, which is typical any time of the year. Bring warm clothes and good rain gear. In the summer months, bugs (midges) are a nuisance, but they didn't bother us in September.

Online Information

Comprehensive travel information is available here.

TripAdvisor has links to travel information.

Sites like this one have information specifically for photographers.