Isle of Skye, Scotland 

In June of 2022, my family and I went on a two week trip to Scotland. We rented a car and stayed in several different areas, the third of which being The Isle of Skye.

Isle of Skye Itinerary:

Day 6: (drive from Inverness to Breakish, Isle of Skye, overnight in Breakish, Isle of Skye)

-Loch Ness Centre & Exhibition

-Loch Ness 

-Eileen Donan Castle 

Day 7: (overnight in Breakish, Isle of Skye)

-Lealt Falls 

-Kilt Rock & Mealt Falls viewpoint 

-Skye Museum of Island Life

-drive around top portion of the island

-walk around Portree

Day 8: (overnight in Breakish, Isle of Skye)

-Dunvegan Castle 

-Fairy pools 

As you might have guessed, Isle of Skye is an island, connected to the mainland via a bridge. Originally we had planned to stay in the town of Portree on the isle, but due to a mistake in booking a place in Portree, Ireland, we ended up, at the last minute, renting an Airbnb place in Breakish. This just meant that whenever we drove to visit different places on the island we had to add about 30-45 minutes to our driving time. 

On one of my morning runs, from the little house we were staying in on Isle of Skye, I found a cemetery. We visited it later with the whole family and it was really fascinating. It was right down by the water and had very old graves as well as graves from WWll soldiers. 

Loch Ness

Loch Ness which translates to “Lake Ness” is about a 20 minute drive from Inverness. We visited here on the way to Isle of Skye. We made a short stop at the “ Loch Ness Centre & Exhibition” along the way. There were about 6 different rooms in the exhibition. You go from one to another to watch short videos about the history of Loch Ness and various theories about what lies beneath its murky waters. I thought they did a wonderful job presenting the facts and then leaving it open for personal interpretation about whether a monster lives there or not. 

Some interesting facts we learned about the lake is that Loch Ness has enough water to cover the world’s population three times over and it is the biggest body of water in the U.K.

A short drive from the centre to Fort Augustus provided us with an area to walk down to the lake and have lunch.

 

Eilean Donan Castle

The castle was about an hour drive from Fort Augustus and was my favorite castle we visited on our trip. The castle, built on a small island has secret staircases, secret peepholes, and secret places to stand and listen to conversations. The weather while we were there was absolutely perfect, cloudy and windy!

Eilean Donan or the Island of Donan takes its name from a 6th century Irish saint, Bishop Donan. He came to Scotland around 580 A.D. and is believed to have established a monastic cell on the island. 

A castle was first established on the island in the 13th century. In 1719 the castle was destroyed and left in ruins for nearly 200 years. Before it was destroyed, it had been owned by the Mackenzie family. In 1912, the MacRae family, (who used to be the bodyguards to the Mackenzie family), owned the castle and decided to have it renovated to its current state. 

Lealt Falls, Mealt Falls, & Kilt Rock

Lealt Falls is very pretty. There is a nice little path that you could walk down part of the cliff and look out over the ocean and the nearby hills. The landscape of this area is gorgeous! Rolling green hills with cliffs next to the ocean. 

About a ten minute drive down the road from there, you will find Mealt Falls and Kilt Rock. As you can probably guess, it is shaped like a kilt. Kilt Rock is a 60 meter high sea cliff. Its tall columns are made of hard basalt which stands on top of a softer sandstone. Again, a very beautiful area. 

The Skye Museum of Island Life

The museum is comprised of small huts made in the traditional style of the people who lived there, each covers a different topic. They had information on everything from how the postal service worked on the island to the superstitions people had about meeting someone on your way to go fishing. For example, it would take a postal runner 3 days to bring the mail from Inverness to Dunvegan Castle (118 miles). My personal favorite fact that we learned was that in very difficult times, small quantities of blood would be taken from a cow and mixed with oatmeal to make a form of black pudding that the people would then eat. 

Dunvegan Castle

The gardens at this castle were absolutely stunning, it was like a little mini Wonderland. This castle, built in the 13th century, is the oldest castle in Scotland that is still inhabited. While we were able to tour most of the house, sections were closed off because the family still lives there. 

At this castle, they had a fun game where they had hidden a key (or sometimes more than one), in each room and you had to try to find them. 

This castle even had a dungeon! In between the walls of the dungeon and the drawing room there is a staircase up which food was carried from the kitchens into the great hall. This was a “refinement of torture for the prisoners, who were able to smell food through the slit window while slowly starving to death”. 

There is a tower in the castle called the fairy tower. It is said that a long time ago, a nurse left the baby she was looking after to go and join a celebration in the castle. When she came back, she found the baby wrapped in a fairy flag and being sung to by a fairy. The fairy flag is now in a frame and is hung in one of the rooms in the castle.

Fairy pools

The Fairy Pools consist of the River Brittle flowing downhill to form mini waterfalls and pools. There isn’t much legend behind the name or place where the pools are. There is a belief though that one of the old Scottish chiefs married a fairy nearby this area and yet another thought that Selkies, (fairies that lived as seals in water, but shed their skins to become human once on land), once swam in the pools. A battle did take place on these grounds and the river supposedly ran red from all the blood.

We drove the car we rented to get there and parked at the Glen Brittle car park. As we hiked up to the fairy pools, it was super windy and rainy, very reminiscent of Alaska. With the bright green hills and the overcast sky, the place seemed magical. The hike took about 2 hours round trip, which also included a lunch break while out there. 

Overall, I really enjoyed my time on Isle of Skye and hope to be able to visit again someday!