The Isle of Skye: Scotland at its best

We started out for Skye via the Kyle of Lochalsh and the Skye Bridge at about 9.30 am. Early starts just don’t seem to be working as we never wake up before 7.30 am!

It was overcast and misty as we drove from Invermoriston via the A87 towards Skye (also known in Gaelic as An t-Eilean Sgitheanach or The Winged Isle). The cloud was so low it obscured the rugged peaks of Glenmoriston but visibility at road level was good and the forecast for the day was no rain and 15%-30% cloud cover so we were optimistic that it would soon clear. We had our first real experience of one lane roads but we were lucky in that traffic was light. We did see a few semi-trailers from Stornaway heading for some point east but we didn’t meet them until the road had widened again.

By 10.30 am we had reached the famous castle of Eilean Donan at the approaches to the Kyle of Lochalsh and just 8 miles from Skye. This is probably one of the most famous castles in Scotland having been used as a filming location in several movies including Highlander (the view from the bridge over Loch Long and from the hill overlooking the castle), Loch Ness (a brief view down Loch Duich), and Oliver’s Travels (near Carr Brae). The single track road from Dornie to the viewpoint at Carr Brae has also appearsed frequently in the BBC television series Hamish Macbeth. We decided to give a tour of the castle a miss and press on to our destination but took a photo or two on the move as we drove past.

The Isle of Skye is surprisingly close to the mainland and the bridge (opened in 1995) doesn’t take long to cross; a couple of minutes and we’re there. Our first stop is Broadwater where an extremely helpful staff member at the Tourist Information Centre gives us some areas to focus on that can be covered in a day. It’s soon clear that we cannot manage to cover the whole island unless we race around it without stopping, and believe me any kind of racing is definitely out in the north of the island where the single track roads really are single tracks! We opt to take the route to the north via Portree (I really prefer the Gaelic version of Port Righ), along the east, north and then west coast to Uig and then back through Portree to our starting point before driving home.

This turned out to be the Scotland we had been looking for since first crossing the border. It’s totally unspoiled by the curse of the 21st Century – people!! (If you discount the odd tour bus of course, but more about that later). Property prices are reasonable compared to the rest of Scotland and definitely better than in the UK, and I could definitely live there if I ever chose to leave Australia.

Portree is the main town on Skye but it’s more like a country village. There’s a famous row of houses by the harbour that seem to appear in countless stock photos of the island due to their colourful livery with each house painted in a different pastel shade; pink, peach, blue, white – very distinctive. The high street has the usual tourist fare and its fair share of cafes and tea shops but still manages to retain an air of quaint gentility and the pace is definitely slow and easy.