Scottish Highlands and Skye
Seven days from Edinburgh through Glencoe to Skye and back along the Great Glen.
Road Trip · 7 days · May, Jun, Sep, Oct
The North Coast 500 has turned the Highlands into a driving challenge, which is the wrong instinct: the distances are short and the weather decides everything, so a loop with slack in it beats a route with a mileage target. This one puts three nights on Skye rather than the usual one, which is the difference between photographing the Quiraing from the road and walking it. Glencoe and Glenfinnan are on the way up, Loch Ness and Cairngorm on the way back, and the Jacobite steam service is worth arranging the week around if it is running.
Day by day
- Day 1
Edinburgh
One day in the city before the road, spent on the ridge rather than the shops.
09:30Edinburgh Castle and the Royal Mile
A fortress on a volcanic plug that has been besieged more often than anywhere else in Britain, with the Scottish crown jewels and the Stone of Destiny in it.
Book a timed slot. The one o'clock gun is fired every day except Sunday.
16:00Arthur's Seat
An extinct volcano inside the city boundary, with the whole of Edinburgh, the Forth and Fife laid out from the summit.
251 metres, about an hour up from the Holyrood side, and genuinely windy at the top.
- Day 2
North to Glencoe
Three hours by way of Loch Lomond and Rannoch Moor.
11:30Rannoch Moor
Fifty square miles of blanket bog, lochans and granite with the road running straight across the middle of it, and the last of the Caledonian pines on the edges.
There is essentially nothing here: no fuel, no food, patchy signal. Fill up in Tyndrum.
14:00Glencoe and the Three Sisters
A glacial trench with 1,000-metre walls on both sides, and the massacre of 1692 still shapes how the glen is talked about.
The Hidden Valley walk is around three hours return and involves a river crossing and a boulder field.
- Day 3
The road to the isles
West to Mallaig past the viaduct, then the ferry across to Skye.
09:30Glenfinnan Viaduct
Twenty-one arches of mass concrete from 1901, curving above the head of Loch Shiel, with the 1745 monument below it.
The car park fills early and the walk to the viewpoint is twenty minutes uphill. Check the Jacobite steam timetable if you want a train on it.
14:00Mallaig to Armadale ferry
Thirty minutes across the Sound of Sleat with Knoydart behind you, which is the arrival Skye deserves.
Book the car space in advance in summer. The alternative is the bridge at Kyle of Lochalsh, which is free and less interesting.
16:30Sleat and the Point of Sleat road
The green, wooded end of Skye that nobody photographs, with the Cuillin on the horizon and Knoydart across the sound.
Single track with passing places; the etiquette is to pull in and wave, and it is taken seriously.
- Day 4
Trotternish
The strangest landscape in Britain, on the peninsula north of Portree.
07:30The Quiraing
A landslip still moving a few centimetres a year, which has produced pinnacles, a hidden plateau and a rock table, and nothing else in Britain looks like it.
The car park is small and charged, and full by nine. The circuit is around seven kilometres with one exposed section.
13:30The Old Man of Storr
A fifty-metre basalt pinnacle left standing when the cliff behind it collapsed, and the most recognisable rock on the island.
Around four kilometres return, steep and eroded. The car park is paid and fills by mid-morning.
17:00Kilt Rock and Mealt Falls
A sixty-metre sea cliff of vertical basalt columns over horizontal sandstone, with a waterfall dropping straight off the top into the sea.
Roadside viewpoint, five minutes. The wind across the railings makes a genuine humming noise.
- Day 5
The Cuillin and the west
The other half of Skye: gabbro mountains, sea lochs and the Fairy Pools.
08:00The Fairy Pools, Glen Brittle
A chain of clear blue plunge pools running down off the Black Cuillin, with the ridge standing over them the entire way up.
Paid car park, and the path involves stepping stones that are impassable after heavy rain. Very busy from ten.
14:00Neist Point
The westernmost point of Skye, with a lighthouse on a headland and the Outer Hebrides across the Minch on a clear evening.
The concrete path down is steep and slick; the drop off the cliff edge is unfenced.
- Day 6
East to Loch Ness
Off the island by the bridge, then along the Great Glen.
10:00Eilean Donan Castle
On an islet where three sea lochs meet, blown up by the Royal Navy in 1719 and rebuilt from ruins between 1919 and 1932.
Almost entirely a twentieth-century reconstruction, which does not make it less striking.
14:30Urquhart Castle and Loch Ness
A ruined castle on a promontory halfway down the Great Glen fault, which is the only place the scale of the loch actually reads.
The loch holds more fresh water than every lake in England and Wales combined, and is 230 metres deep.
- Day 7
The Cairngorms
One last mountain morning before the Inverness flight.
09:00Cairngorm and the Rothiemurchus pines
One of the largest surviving fragments of the Caledonian pine forest, with a ruined island castle in the middle of the loch.
Loch an Eilein is a flat five-kilometre loop and the easiest good walk in the park.
14:00Lunch in Inverness
The capital of the Highlands, on the Ness, and the last chance at Scottish seafood before a flight south.
Twenty minutes from the airport, which makes it the right last stop.
Questions
- How long is the Scottish Highlands and Skye itinerary?
- The Scottish Highlands and Skye itinerary runs 7 days and covers 16 stops across Edinburgh, Glencoe, Portree, Inverness.
- When is the best time to do the Scottish Highlands and Skye itinerary?
- May, Jun, Sep, Oct is the best window for the Scottish Highlands and Skye itinerary.
- What happens on day one of the Scottish Highlands and Skye itinerary?
- Day one is edinburgh: One day in the city before the road, spent on the ridge rather than the shops.
Sources
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