Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 - Day 4, 5, 6, 7 - The Skye Trail

The bus from Inverness to Skye left at 8.30 in the morning. It was the middle of the summer, so obviously there were other options but I wanted to get there as early as I could.

It was a long journey to Skye. The first bus from Inverness to Portree—that's main city on the island—was 3h15mins long, then another hour local bus ride to get to the starting point on the north of the island.

The Skye Trail is an unofficial route, but it's still very popular, so all you need to tell the bus driver is that you want to go to the red phone box. They know what you mean and drop you off just in the right place. 😉

Before I really get into it, here's the map of the north par of Skye, along with my full route. The bit you can see is only about a quarter of the full size of the island, but I still walked 43 km.

The dots marked 1 and 2 are the sleep spots for the first and second night respectively.

The very first couple of kilometres are a pretty standard coastal path to reach the sea. Right from the start, the trail offers great views over Tulm Bay and the Duntulm Castle.

That path leads to the Rubha Hunish peninsula, with an even better landscape. I must say I got lucky with the weather that day.

I'm pretty sure it's possible to go to the end of the peninsula, but my trace didn't go there and it'd be quite a long detour, so I just followed along the top of the cliff.

The next 9km just followed along the coast, sometimes uncomfortably close to the edge, sometimes in the middle of cows or sheep, but always offering absolutely astounding views.

This whole part had a decently clear path to follow, but the last kilometre along the coast was a bit more unsure. I wasn't lost in any way—I was following the path from the app, and I knew the path was between the sea and the mountain immediately on the right—but there seemed to be a few different mediumly well defined paths I could follow.

I just pushed along through the long grass and fern, until I reached a path to move towards the more inside part of the island.

For this small part, the path followed the road. One thing that's immediately noticeable when driving here is the sheep everywhere. Even though I didn't myself drive to get there, I did notice it straight away.

Now, walking on the road is almost the same but you notice it differently. First off, it's obviously impossible to miss, but you also get to see how the locals and the sheep themselves behave with each other. The sheep don't seem to care much about the cars, and the drivers don't seem to care much about the sheep.

They just drive as any local anywhere would and honk when the sheep don't move out of the way, and the sheep just stay there on the side of the road.

After a short leg along the road, the path led straight into the mountains.
The surroundings looked very peaceful and welcoming, so I decided to just set up camp for the night here before going into the mountains where I might not be able to pitch my tent for a few kilometres.

The landscape was immediately mountainous, although small, soft mountains.

I climbed up one to find a nice and flat spot away from the path and the road and pitched my tent.

I enjoyed dinner in front of a magnificent view over a small lake and the sea.

When I woke up, the clouds were fairly low, and covering the mountains where I was supposed to go, so I got a little worried.
The weather cleared up rather fast—gotta love the quick-changing Scottish weather—and made way for a beautiful sunny day.

The first part in the mountains was rather quiet, only saw a few other hikers, but I quickly got to what seemed like a popular tourist hiking route.
I passed A LOT of people wearing variably appropriate clothing, ranging from proper hiking boots to sandals and city outfits.

It didn’t cause too much issue, and I eventually got to the proper mountain part with virtually no tourists.

I stopped for lunch right after leaving the busy part and got visited by a few sheep as usual.
That was the last of the bread I’d got from Inverness before leaving the day before.

Throughout the day, I kept seeing the same group of three guys from Sheffield.
I overtook them, then they overtook me, and so on.
They’d started that morning from the north so they had walked essentially double what I had by the end of the day.

By 5 o’clock, they were starting to consider setting up camp for the night.
I initially wanted to continue a lot more, right until sunset, but I couldn’t realistically get there in time so I stopped around 7.

I got lucky with a beautiful spot on a pass in the middle of the ridge, with a nice little stone wall to shelter from the wind.
The wall really did wonders stopping the fairly strong winds, although the wind did prevent midges a bit.

I got treated with a magnificent sunset during and after dinner.

The wonderful landscape called for a little flight with Henry, capturing stunning views of the ridge.

The morning was the polar opposite of the evening before.
The wind got much more intense, the clouds were very low, and it was raining pretty hard.

I waited a little bit inside my tent, but quickly realised it wasn’t going to calm down, so I packed up as best I could and got walking.

I still had quite a few kilometres to Portree, my final stop.

The rain and clouds did not falter for the rest of the day.
The terrain was almost entirely soggy, wet swamp-like grass for the first 3+ hours.

My shoes soon ended up very damp, and so did the rest of my clothes.

I finally started seeing the end of the ridge just after 3 o’clock, and boy was I glad to get out of the clouds.

The final descent was from the Old Man of Storr peaks, which seems to be a popular tourist hike.

I’d barely seen anyone while up on the ridge, so seeing the lot of tourists was quite surprising.

Since I was completely wet, and probably looked quite tired, I got quite a few looks from tourists as I walked down.

Once I’d followed the path down to the road, I still had about 10km to go to Portree.
On the one hand, I really wanted to see it through, but it was already 4 o’clock, so I couldn’t realistically get to Portree before the last bus to Inverness.

I really didn’t want to have to camp with all my wet clothes and tent, so I just resorted to hitchhiking to Portree.

There was a decent number of cars passing by, mostly tourists in nice cars, so I wasn’t surprised none of them stopped for very wet me.
A local finally picked me up.
She was a proper local, born and raised on the island, though she had lived in several other places too.

She was going all the way to her house in the south of the island, so she offered to drive me down to Broadford.
It was easily an hour’s drive down, so she was super nice of her.
We chatted the whole way, mostly about local languages like Gaelic and Breton.
She was a really lovely and interesting person.

She dropped me off at a service station right next to where the bus for Inverness stops so I could get something to eat.
I still had a bit of time to spare, so I sat down by the seaside in this charming little old port for a few minutes before getting to the bus stop.

It was already close to 9 o’clock when I got to Inverness, so I quickly went to the hostel I’d booked from the bus.
I’d booked a bed in the last room available, only to be told it was a women-only room when I got there…!

I then set off to find another place to stay in Inverness, but everything was fully booked: the hostel up the road, the last hostel I’d stayed in, and the one next to that.
My only option—for a reasonable price, that is—was the first hostel I stayed in, a bit out from the centre.

That was a pretty big hostel, so they still had a few beds left.

I had some dinner, the last one I’d planned for the hike, then soon crashed out for the night.
I took the train back to England first thing in the morning.

Even though I caved in for the last bit of the hike, I still think I did the best part.
I want to go back some day, hopefully soon, to finish the rest of the Skye Trail.
It’s a magnificent hike through various terrain, and honestly accessible to most people ready to sleep in the wilderness—although ultimately not that remote.

I ended up doing what is possibly the slowest marathon in recent history.