Isle of Skye - Day One

The cliffs of northern Skye

We did a bit of a walking holiday in Skye back in the beginning of summer. There is the beginnings of a long-distance walking route along the length of the island, the Skye Trail. It's not official and there are certainly no track markings along the way, or indeed even a track along most of it. But the photos we saw looked pretty stunning and we managed to find someone who would organise accommodation and transfers for us, as well as give us some walking notes. It's about a 3 hour drive to the very north of the island from Inverness. The roads were pretty good, we had heard about the single lane roads in Skye. But luckily the first day was on some good roads, managed to ease us into the weekend. We were also lucky in that there wasn't much traffic, I wonder how crazy it gets in the high season?

Inhospitable graveyard

Fences just fall off the edge of cliffs

Our first two nights were at Flodigarry, right up in the north of the island, there is not much further you can go. We got there kind of late in the day, having a long drive from Inverness, but we still managed to fit in a couple of kms of walking. The first section of the Skye trail is from Rubha Hunish to Flodigarry (I loved the names on this island). We got dropped off at the start by the owner of the hostel we were staying at that evening. There is no path to speak of, we just followed the cliffs round the headland and then back along to the hostel. The hostel owners definitely seem to be trying to drive the creation of the Skye Trail. They will go out and add route markers and try and get the route to go as close as possible to the hostel they own.

We really got a good feel for the wildness of the Skye landscape even in these few kilometres. It was blowing a gale, cold and raining on and off, it really didn't feel like somewhere you want to live. The cliffs and rocks are amazing, and whilst you wouldn't want to swim in the ocean the pounding of the waves against the cliffs really added to the atmosphere.

It was a good start to the walking, and the hostel we were staying at, whilst it was a real basic hostel, was right next door to this incredibly luxurious hotel so we could jump the fence and eat at their pub. Which was pretty nice after a couple of hours in the cold and wet.

Not much out there

Great cliffs, wouldn't want to mis-step in the mist