The Isle of Skye From Inverness

Skye is the longest day anyone sells out of Inverness, and the driving is most of it. A single day is twelve hours kerb to kerb, and perhaps four of those are spent out of the vehicle. The two-day tour spreads the same ground over a night on the island. Every option is on Isle of Skye tours from Inverness, and what follows is what each stop actually is.

Eilean Donan Castle — on the way, not on Skye

The castle on its island, where three sea lochs meet, is on the mainland rather than on Skye. It stands forty minutes short of the bridge and is the first proper stop on every route here. Admission is £13 for an adult, £12 concession, £6.50 for a child aged 5 to 15 and £38 for a family of two adults and three children. Opening runs from 10am in February to a 9am start in high summer, with last admission an hour or two before the door closes.

The Old Man of Storr

The rock pinnacle above Portree is the shape on every Skye poster. From the roadside car park the walk up is steep and takes well over an hour each way, which no day tour has. A coach stop is therefore a viewpoint rather than a climb. Ten minutes is common; on the longer stops you can get up the first rise for a cleaner angle.

The Quiraing

A landslip on the Trotternish ridge that is still moving, leaving a set of green terraces and rock towers unlike anything else in Britain. It is the stop most single-day routes leave out, because the road over to it is slow. If you want it, check the itinerary before you book.

Kilt Rock and Lealt Falls

Two roadside stops on the same stretch of coast north of Portree. One is a columnar basalt sea cliff with a waterfall dropping straight off it; the other is a gorge where a burn runs out to a shingle beach. Both are ten-minute stops by design — you park, you look, you go — and both are free.

Portree

The island’s main town and the lunch stop on almost every route, with the row of painted houses along the harbour that is the other photograph everyone takes. An hour is the usual allowance and it is enough to eat and walk the front, not both at leisure.

The Fairy Pools

A chain of clear pools and small falls on the River Brittle under the Black Cuillin. This is the one Skye stop that is a genuine walk. The path is rough, often wet, and the pools are a fair way from the car park, so an hour and a half is the difference between reaching them and reading the sign. Only a couple of routes give you that much, and most do not go at all.

Sligachan and the Cuillin

The old bridge at Sligachan sits at the foot of the Black Cuillin, the most serious mountain range in Britain. This is where the island stops being scenic and starts being alpine. It is a short photo stop on several routes, and on a clear day it is the best twenty minutes of the drive.

What a twelve-hour day actually fits

Four or five stops, of which one is lunch. That is the honest shape of it, and it is why the choice between routes comes down to which four you want rather than how many. If four stops in twelve hours sounds thin, the two-day tour gives Dunvegan Castle and the Fairy Pools two hours each, which no single day can.