Scotland Travel Diary: Ten Days from Edinburgh to Skye

Ten days, Edinburgh to Skye and back, in a small hire car. Written up from the notes I actually made rather than tidied afterwards, which means the weather features heavily and so does the driving, because those turned out to be the two things that shaped the trip.

Days one and two: Edinburgh

Started in the city because the flights are cheaper and because Edinburgh rewards two slow days more than one rushed one. The Old Town is compact enough to walk entirely, and the thing nobody tells you is how vertical it is — the closes and stairs off the Royal Mile drop away sharply, and what looks like a five minute walk on the map is a climb.

Arthur's Seat, early, is the best single hour in the city. It is a genuine hill rather than a viewpoint with a car park, it takes about an hour up at an unhurried pace, and going before nine means having it largely to yourself.

What I would change: I booked the castle for the afternoon of day one and it was heaving. Go first thing or skip it in favour of the smaller museums, which are free and largely empty.

Day three: north and west

Out of the city and into the first real lesson of the trip, which is that Highland distances lie. The mileage looks trivial; the roads are single carriageway, frequently single track with passing places, and behind a caravan you travel at the caravan's speed. Budget roughly half the average speed you would assume anywhere else, and stop when something is worth stopping for, because pressing on to a schedule is how you see nothing.

Loch Lomond on the way north is pleasant and busy. The landscape does not really change until further on.

Day four: Glencoe

The best day of the trip and the one the photographs do not prepare you for, because the scale only reads when you are inside it. The glen opens as you come over Rannoch Moor and the walls simply keep going up. Cloud was down to about half height, which locals said was normal and which made it better rather than worse — the peaks appearing and disappearing did more than a clear day would have.

Walked the Lost Valley, which is short, steep, and involves genuine scrambling and a river crossing. Not a stroll. Worth it.

Days five and six: to Skye

Over the bridge rather than the ferry, mostly for time. Skye is bigger than it looks on a map and the roads are slower still — the loops out to Neist Point or up the Trotternish are half-day commitments, not detours.

The Quiraing in cloud was atmospheric to the point of being disorienting; the Old Man of Storr, done early to avoid the car park filling, was the better walk. Fairy Pools were busy, and the water was too cold for anything more than a very short and regrettable swim.

Midges arrived on the second evening, still and damp after rain, and were as bad as advertised. Repellent and a head net are not an affectation between June and August.

Day seven: the weather day

Rain, horizontal, all day. This is the day worth planning for in advance, because there will usually be one. Museums, a distillery tour, a long lunch and a drying room at the accommodation. The trip would have been worse without a flexible plan and better waterproofs.

The lesson I would pass on: book accommodation with somewhere to dry things. It sounds trivial and it is not.

Days eight to ten: back east

Returned via a different route to avoid retracing, through Fort William and along the Great Glen, then across toward the east coast. The West Highland Line runs near part of this and if I did it again I would consider doing at least one leg by train instead of driving — it is genuinely one of the great rail journeys and you cannot look at scenery properly while driving a single-track road.

What I would do differently

Fewer places, longer in each. The temptation is to add another loch and another glen, and the result is that you remember the car. Three bases over ten days would have been better than five.

Book further ahead for summer. Highland accommodation is limited and fills, and the good places on Skye go months out.

Take the ferry to Skye rather than the bridge, at least one way, and build the West Highland Line in. Both are the journey rather than the transit, which in Scotland is usually where the trip actually is.