The Misty Isle (Isle of Skye in general)

Member Name: eilidhcatriona

Product:	Isle of Skye in general
Date:	19/10/09 (56 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Stunning landscape, nice towns to visit

Disadvantages: None

The Isle of Skye is somewhere I have wanted to visit my whole life, but have never had the chance. The Scottish Isles for me have a sort of mystique about them, the isolation and the tradition they have, but Skye has always been the one I've wanted to go to. I think a lot of it has to do with my favourite band, Runrig, being from there - their songs are often about the landscape they grew up in, and they even have a song called Skye.

Finally, at the end of September this year, I went to the island with my parents. Having been staying on the mainland for several days in rubbish weather, the first remotely decent day we had we jumped in the car and shot across the bridge, as they knew how excited I was to go to the island, and we didn't want to miss the best weather we were likely to have (best in this sense is mainly dry with showers, and clouds high enough that we could see some of the views).

Skye is known as the Misty Isle, for rather obvious reasons - we experienced that weather the whole week we were in the area. It is one of the strongest Gaelic-speaking areas of Scotland, and the Gaelic college, Sabhal Mor Ostaig, is located on the island. Skye itself is An t-Eilean Sgithaneach in Gaelic, so let's just use Skye as it's less of a mouthful...

Skye is located off the north west coast of Scotland , in the Atlantic Ocean . The nearest town on the mainland is Kyle of Lochalsh, to which trains run from Inverness , or it can be reached by road on the A87. These days Skye is accessed from the mainland over the Skye Bridgerather than ferry, which rather ruins the misty ideas of Over The Sea To Skye, but at least the toll has been removed and you can drive back and forth over the bridge to your hearts content.

From Kyle you can see the town of Kyleakin , which is where the ferry from the mainland used to dock. Kyleakin is a small village, and without the ferry it is now effectively bypassed, as you don't need to enter the village from the bridge if you are heading to the larger towns of Broadford and Portree, or to the mountains. Kyleakin has several shops and cafes, and it still has its small harbour (in which I saw a boat called Eilidh...not sure if that's a good thing or not that a boat has my name!). Beside the harbour is the Bright Water Visitor Centre, which is dedicated to raising awareness and funds for the famous otter population of the area, notably on the small island of Eilean Ban , which the author and otter lover Gavin Maxwell lived on for a time. We had a quick look around, but it's really more for young children, and it is quite educational.

We continued on to Broadford, further north. From the road we could see the famous Cuillen range of mountains, some of the more challenging Munroes, and we could see the Isle of Scalpay, which lies off Skye's east coast.

Broadford is a small town or large village, with a few shops and, bizarrely, the Skye Serpentarium. I say bizarrely because a snake house just isn't the kind of tourist attraction I would expect to find on Skye. Anyway, we stopped in Broadford and had a look at a few shops.

Skye Jewellery is well worth a look, although it is pricey. They have a lot of locally inspired ranges, all named after parts of the famous island and its mountains - Blaven, Marsco and Cuillen being examples. But be warned, it isn't cheap - I was drawn to plain silver pendants of the outline of Skye, and even they were £160. To my mum's annoyance, my dad had waited outside - so she picked up a brochure to leave lying around for him...

The other shops we went to were a bit odd. They were down by the old pier, and there were a lot of signposts to them. They were in old sheds - the only ones which were open were a knitwear shop and a second hand specialist rare book shop. I went into the knitwear shop with my mum, and promptly walked back out to follow my dad into the bookshop - it smelled off sheep poo from the wool they used. I'm sure the jumpers didn't smell, but the shop did. The bookshop however smelled of damp books, so we left there and went for a stroll down the pier to take some photos of the views.

The next part of the day was my favourite. On the road from Broadford to Portree we could see the Cuillens and the separate mountains Glamaig and Bla Bheinn. The best view is from Sligachan, which is basically just a pub and campsite at the end of the sea loch of Loch Sligachan, all sitting in the shadow of the incredible mountains. The closest to Sligachan is Sgurr Alasdair, but you can see much of the ridge, and you can see through to Bla Bheinn further south. The campsite at Sligachan looks amazing, to look out of your tent or caravan every morning at that view would be incredible. The campsite and the pub are very popular with climbers wanting to do the Cuillen, but they are for serious and experienced climbers only - my dad has been hillwalking for many years, and he has only done one of the twelve Munroes Skye has to offer.

After gawping at the view, we continued onto Portree, the "capital" of Skye. We stopped at the Aros Centre on the outskirts of the town, a kind of cultural centre with cinema, art gallery and exhibitions, along with a shop and café. The shop was a little twee, but had some nice gifty type things in it. We had lunch in the café, and it was very nice if a bit odd - there was a baked tattie section of the menu listing various fillings, one of which was macaroni cheese. I thought that was a rather interesting idea so I chose that. But I got macaroni cheese with a baked tattie - a large dish of macaroni, side salad and baked potato where you might expect chips. It was very nice, just not what was implied on the menu!

From Aros we went into Portree itself. Portree is not large, but it is large by the standard of the island and the nearby mainland - I think it is larger than Kyle. Skye is a popular tourist destination, although it hasn't been ruined by it, so Portree has plenty of tourist friendly shops. Pottery, jewellery, local foods, books, tourist tat and a brilliant little music shop which only sells Scottish music and instruments. My dad loves this shop, and always makes a point of buying a CD there. I had a good look through their Runrig CDs to see if there was anything on limited release they might have - none, unfortunately!

The harbour of Portree is worth a visit. It is below the main part of the town, down a steep little lane, but the building there are painted in a variety of bright colours. It isn't quite as striking as the seafront of Tobermory on Mull (better known as Balamory), but it is very pretty. There are a few hotels and shops here, but most of the shops are up in the main part of the town.

We headed north from Portree, so that I could see the famous Old Man Of Storr. This is a pillar of rock which stands out from the mountains, and is really quite striking. Unfortunately by this time the rain and mist had come back, but I still got a reasonable view of it. On the road my mum, who is now fairly immobile, was happily pointing out the ridges she had climbed with my dad back in 1980, which was odd as I didn't know her back in her hillwalking days - I knew she had as I inherited her boots, but it was odd to see her remembering the views!

We headed back through Portree and down to Broadford, where we turned off to go across the island to Elgol. The road was about 15 miles, but it took us 45 minutes each way - it is single track, with blind summits all over the place, although there were plenty of passing places. We took it quite slow and steady - my mum is a nervous passenger and my dad felt more comfortable taking it easy on a tricky road he didn't know.

Halfway to Elgol we stopped for a photo opportunity. We were right below Bla Bheinn, which has an impressive spiky ridged summit (some obscured by cloud). From this point photos of the mountain have a small white house in the foreground, recognisable to anyone who has ever looked at a book about the Munroes, as they almost all feature photos of Bla Bheinn with the wee white house in front! So we had to take our own photos with the wee white house...

Elgol itself is very small, but it has a couple of cafes, shops and some cute thatched holiday cottages. We went right to the end of the village, which is a viewpoint. From there we could see across the sea to the islands of Rum and Canna, which was an amazing view. Annoyingly Canna appeared to be bathed in sunlight, which was irritating as Skye was a bit dreich at this point. We could also see the end of the Cuillen range, and the small island of Soay , another of Gavin Maxwell's haunts.

From Elgol we headed back across the island to Broadford, with a brief stop for sheep rush hour, and then it was time to leave Skye. I loved my day on the island, the landscape really touched me - perhaps it was better I visited as an adult rather than a child as I probably appreciated it more. I really loved it, and I intend to go back one day - hopefully when it's sunny! I could quite happily have spent hours at Sligachan, just gazing at the view, so I'll have to go back to get my fill.

Summary: Beautiful