Skye

This day long excursion takes us via Loch Ness, Urquhart Castle, beautiful Glenmoriston and onward through historic Kintail, the scene of a Jacobite battle. Past the Five Sisters Peaks and down into Lochalsh, we are soon “over the sea to Skye,” pausing for a photograph of Eilean Donan Castle and Loch Duich.

Eilein a Cheò (Skye) is in itself a microcosm of all things Highland and indeed Scottish. On this one stretch of beautiful landscape, over 50 miles long but never more than a few miles wide, there can be found the modern day and ancestral homes of two of the great Clans of Scotland, The MacDonalds at Armadale and the MacLeods of Dunvegan.

Here too is the scene of a British Naval frigate with over 400 marines being sent to put down resistance by crofters. The marines were on the Island for some six months following the Battle of the Braes near Portree where during the Highland Clearances 50 police dispatched from Glasgow to evict the people from their homes were challenged and seen off, mainly by the womenfolk.

Unique in political history this Island and the neighbouring Western seaboard returned 4 members of parliament to Westminster in 1885. They had no party affiliation other than they were all from the crofting community. Their determined collective spirit won them the protection of the Crofting Land Act in 1886.

Some of the oldest mountains in the world, the Black Cuillins are here, created by violent volcanic eruption millions of years ago. The lochs, in turn, a by product of the melting glacial bergs from the Ice Age.

“Talisker”, the Island’s famous Malt Whisky, is distilled at Carbost.

We take a different route home over the Auchtertyre Brae with its panoramic views into Strathcarron down into Achnasheen, Garve and the Kessock Bridge.