Isle of Skye (Portree)

Top things to do in Isle of Skye (Portree)

1. 01

   The Old Man of Storr - the pinnacle above the sound

   scenic hiking 👍 Popular

   A fifty-metre finger of basalt left standing when the cliff behind it collapsed, with a scatter of lesser pinnacles around it and the Sound of Raasay laid out below. The path up from the roadside car park is steep, rebuilt in stone for most of its length and takes an hour or so each way, which makes it the easiest big landscape on the island to reach and by some distance the busiest. Sunrise is the famous version and it is genuinely worth the alarm, but the light is often better late in the day, and the summit of the ridge behind the pinnacles is where you get the view along the whole escarpment.

2. 02

   The Quiraing - walking into the landslip

   scenic hiking adventure ⭐ Highly recommended

   The northern end of the same escarpment, and the strangest ground on the island: a slumped mass of rock that is still moving, throwing up a leaning pillar called the Needle, a walled-in hollow called the Prison, and a flat hidden meadow on top called the Table, where cattle were once hidden from raiders. The circuit from the pass on the Staffin-to-Uig road is about seven kilometres and takes two to three hours, with one exposed traverse above a long drop that is not for anyone uneasy about heights. The road up to the car park itself is single-track, steep and hairpinned, and it can be closed by snow and ice in winter.

3. 03

   The Black Cuillin - Britain's most serious mountain ridge

   hiking climbing adventure

   Twelve Munros on a twelve-kilometre horseshoe of bare gabbro and basalt, so rough it shreds boots and so magnetic in places that compasses are useless. The main ridge traverse is a two-day mountaineering route rather than a walk, and Sgurr Dearg carries the Inaccessible Pinnacle, the only Munro summit in Scotland that needs a rope. Walkers with a head for scrambling get plenty without any of that: Bruach na Frithe is the one ordinary route to the crest, Blaven stands apart on the eastern side and is the finest single hill on the island, and guides working out of Sligachan and Glen Brittle will take beginners up the Pinnacle. The bases for all of it are the campsites, hostel and inns at Sligachan, Carbost and Glen Brittle rather than Portree.

4. 04

   Neist Point - the lighthouse at the western end

   scenic nature wildlife 👍 Popular

   The most westerly point on Skye, where a green headland narrows to a spine of rock with a squat 1909 lighthouse on the end of it and cliffs falling away on both sides. The walk out is short, paved and steeply stepped down at the start, which people forget on the way back up. It is the classic sunset spot on the island and the parking is nowhere near equal to that reputation, but the cliffs are also one of the better places in Scotland to scan for minke whales, basking sharks and porpoises from dry land in late summer.

5. 05

   The Fairy Pools, Glen Brittle

   scenic nature wildlife 👍 Popular

   A chain of clear blue-green plunge pools and small waterfalls on the River Brittle, running down open moor directly beneath the Cuillin, which is the real reason the setting works. It is a flat half-hour walk in on a rebuilt path with a couple of burn crossings that become impassable after heavy rain. Wild swimmers come for it year round and the water is genuinely cold in every month; the car park is pay-and-display and full by mid-morning through summer, so early or late is the whole trick.

6. 06

   Elgol and Loch Coruisk - the boat into the Cuillin

   scenic nature wildlife adventure ⭐ Highly recommended

   Small open boats run from the slipway at Elgol across Loch Scavaig to Loch Coruisk, a dark freshwater loch held in a bowl of the Black Cuillin that Turner painted and Walter Scott made famous, and which is otherwise a long committing walk in. The crossing takes about three quarters of an hour, usually passes a seal colony on the rocks, and drops you for an hour or two ashore on the moraine. Sailings run through the warmer months only and are cancelled in any real swell, so build in a spare day if it matters to you. Elgol itself has the best road-level view of the ridge anywhere.

7. 07

   Dunvegan Castle - the MacLeod seat and the Fairy Flag

   history culture arts

   A fortress on a rock above its own sea loch, held by the same family since the thirteenth century, which the MacLeods claim makes it the oldest continuously inhabited castle in Scotland. Inside, the pull is the Fairy Flag, a fragment of ancient silk the clan believed would save them three times, along with the dungeon, the Jacobite relics and a drinking horn a chief was meant to empty in one go. The gardens are a surprise on this coast, sheltered enough to grow things nothing else nearby will, and boats run from the jetty out to a large common seal colony in the loch.

8. 08

   Talisker Distillery, Carbost

   food culture arts

   The island's oldest working distillery, founded in 1830 on the shore of Loch Harport with the Cuillin behind it, and the source of a famously peaty, peppery, maritime whisky. Tours are short, run several times a day and book out well ahead in summer, and the setting does as much work as the tasting. Skye now has a second distillery in the north at Torabhaig, near Sleat, if you want to compare a much younger spirit.

9. 09

   Kilt Rock and Mealt Falls

   scenic

   A roadside viewpoint north of Portree looking along a ninety-metre sea cliff of vertical basalt columns over a plinth of horizontal sandstone, which is why somebody decided it looked like a pleated kilt. Mealt Falls goes over the edge beside it and, in a westerly, gets blown back up the cliff in a plume. It takes ten minutes, the fence hums in the wind, and it pairs naturally with the dinosaur coast just north of it.

10. 10

    The Coral Beaches at Claigan

    scenic nature wildlife

    Two brilliant white beaches north of Dunvegan that are not coral at all but crushed maerl, a calcified red seaweed that bleaches white when it dries, and which turns the shallows an implausible Caribbean turquoise on a bright day. It is a flat forty-minute walk in from the car park along the shore, past a small tidal island you can usually reach on foot at low water. Bring something to sit on: the shell sand is coarse and the wind here is constant.

11. 11

    Sligachan - the old bridge under the Cuillin

    scenic history hiking

    The junction at the head of the loch where the two mountain ranges face each other, and the single most photographed bridge in the Highlands: a triple-arched stone crossing of 1810 with the ridge of Sgurr nan Gillean rising straight behind it. Local legend says dipping your face in the river for seven seconds buys you eternal beauty, courtesy of a warrior queen who trained heroes in these hills. There is a hotel, a bar full of climbers and a mountain rescue base, and the walk in along Glen Sligachan is the classic long crossing of the island to Camasunary and Elgol.

12. 12

    Skye Museum of Island Life, Kilmuir

    history culture arts

    A row of thatched blackhouses on the north coast, restored as a croft house, a smithy, a weaver's cottage and a barn, which is the clearest picture anywhere on the island of how most people here actually lived until living memory. The graveyard up the hill holds Flora MacDonald, who rowed Bonnie Prince Charlie over from the Outer Hebrides in 1746 disguised as her maid; the tall Celtic cross over her grave is a replacement, the original having been chipped away by souvenir hunters.

13. 13

    The Fairy Glen, Uig

    scenic nature wildlife

    A pocket of miniature grassy cones, ponds and rock outcrops behind Uig that looks like a landscape built at one-tenth scale, with a natural basalt tower called Castle Ewen at the far end that you can scramble up. It is another slump feature rather than anything supernatural, and it takes half an hour to wander. Please do not add to the spiral stone patterns on the grass; they are not traditional, they damage the turf, and the community keeps clearing them away.

14. 14

    Staffin's dinosaur coast

    nature wildlife history

    The rocks along this shore are Middle Jurassic and among the best in the world for that period, which is why sauropod and theropod footprints turn up in the shelf at An Corran beach, visible at low tide after storms have scoured the sand off them. The small museum at Ellishadder holds bones, footprints and a good deal of local history, and staff will tell you what the tide is doing. It is a genuine palaeontology site rather than a display, so nothing is guaranteed and nothing should be lifted.

15. 15

    Sea eagles from Portree, otters at Kylerhea

    nature wildlife

    White-tailed eagles were reintroduced to this coast after being shot out of Britain, and Skye now holds one of the densest populations anywhere in the country; boat trips out of Portree harbour go looking for them daily in season and often bring them in low over the water. On the other side of the island, the forest hide above the Kylerhea narrows is one of the most reliable places in Scotland to watch wild otters, along with seals riding the tidal race below. Both reward patience and a flat calm morning.

16. 16

    Seafood on the west side

    food

    For an island this small the kitchens are startling, and they are mostly in old crofts and inns a long way from anywhere: The Three Chimneys at Colbost and Loch Bay at Stein on the northwest coast, Edinbane Lodge on the road in, Kinloch Lodge down in Sleat and Coruisk House at Elgol, with Scorrybreac and the harbour places in Portree for something shorter. The raw material is the point - Sconser scallops, langoustines, oysters, crab and hand-dived shellfish landed within sight of the tables. All of them need booking weeks ahead in summer, and several close for part of the winter.

Getting to & around Isle of Skye (Portree)

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