The Isle of Skye is somewhere we’ve wanted to visit for years, but we struggled to find dog friendly accommodation that didn’t break the bank, and which looked clean and comfortable enough to spend a week in. After much trawling of the internet, I eventually stumbled across Mable’s Cottage, and immediately booked a trip for the end of April (the idea being to get some decent spring weather but before the midges woke up). Cue many months of trip planning, trying to come up with a shortlist of everything we wanted to see and do. In the end we were incredibly lucky and had a week of perfect walking weather (apart from one drizzly day), and managed to cram in all of our must-visit sites as well as a few places we uncovered while we were there. That being said, there is so much to see and do on Skye that I’m sure we’ll be back in the future.
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The Fairy Glen
After a long drive up on the Friday, the Saturday was forecast to be our best weather day of the week, and we crammed in three(!) walks to make the most of the all day sunshine. Our first stop of the day was the Fairy Glen, one of Skye’s most famous sites, taking advantage of the fact that the glen was less than a mile away from our cottage to get there early.
We arrived at about half past eight, and while we weren’t the only people there, we were surprised by how quiet it was (this was a bit of a theme of the week – while the ‘iconic sites’ did have other people around, it wasn’t quite the carnage we’d anticipated having seen photos of Skye in peak season). Plan A was to visit the glen and then climb up the hill behind it, however, car parking was limited to 4 hours and therefore we reckoned we wouldn’t have time to do the full walk. Therefore we reverted to Plan B, to have a wander around the Fairy Glen and then jump in the car and head to the coast.
There is a pay and display car park, with a clear (albeit narrow) path from the car park to the glen itself. It’s a short walk to the Fairy Glen, which is a fairly fantastical landscape created by a landslip (a smaller version of the same movements which formed the Trotternish ridge). I’ll confess that at first we were a bit underwhelmed by the Fairy Glen – but climb up onto the mound opposite the main rocky crag and soon you’ll find yourself soaking up the beauty of the landscape.
Visitors to the glen often add stones to the circles in the landscape here – please don’t do this, as it contributes to the erosion of the ground. Stick to the mantra ‘leave no trace’ and take all rubbish away with you.
Dog friendly rating – 3/5. There are plenty of sheep wandering around here, so please keep dogs under close control on a lead. It may also get very busy here in peak season, so if your dog is like Coal and likes their walks quiet, get there early to avoid lots of traffic on the narrow paths. On the plus side, there are no stiles here, and the hour or so to explore the glen at a slow pace is easily manageable for nearly all dogs, even if they’re a bit older and like to take things easier.
Brother’s Point
The most famous ‘point’ on Skye is probably Neist Point with its lighthouse, the most westerly point on Skye. It’s a popular spot to watch the sunset, but instead of driving a long way we nipped up the coast from Uig to Brother’s Point, not far from Staffin.
We followed a short linear walk of 3.5km from our trusty Pocket Mountains guide (which we got a lot of use out of over the week). Parking is free in a large lay-by in Culnacnoc, and when we arrived there was only one other car there. So much for Skye being swamped with tourists!
This is an easy, mostly flat walk, following the coast to the headland of Brother’s Point (or Rubha nam Brathairean to use the Gaelic name). Initially following a track past some holiday cottages, you soon emerge into open coastal grazing land, with the path deteriorating into a grassy (sometimes invisible) trail. There are a few boggy patches to navigate around but we didn’t find it too bad – although it had been dry and sunny for a whole week before we came here.
The views along the coast are fantastic, with Mealt Falls and Kilt Rock soon coming into view across the water. Look out for dinosaur footprints, which were discovered here by university students. We didn’t see any, but then again we didn’t really look very hard! The star of the show for us was Dun Hasan, possibly the site of an Iron Age fort, which we climbed over to reach the grassy headland of Brother’s Point.
The sign at the start of the walk advises you not to climb up Dun Hasan (it’s not that we ignored the sign, just that there is a clear path going up there and the sign is we think designed to put off people without proper footwear or hillwalking experience). Our route took us up and over the outcrop, and to be honest I did not hugely enjoy this part of the walk! Not having a head for heights the very steep and exposed path turned my legs to jelly, while Sam raced up with the dogs in a fraction of the time it took me to crawl/bum shuffle my way up and down, mountain goat that he is.
As well as the views along the coast to Kilt Rock, on a clear day you can see across the sea to the mountains of Wester Ross. We had a great time trying to pick out peaks we recognised from our trip there in September – the only one I could name with confidence was Beinn Eighe, but I’m sure someone better versed in Scottish hills would be able to name plenty more. Once you’ve finished soaking up the views, it’s a simple return back the way you came.
Dog friendly rating – 3/5. This is another walk with sheep throughout and some cliff edges thrown in for good measure, so leads are needed throughout. That being said, there are no stiles and our dogs had absolutely no trouble scampering up and down Dun Hasan!
The Cave of Gold
By this point, it was just after lunch time, and we still had a good few hours of sunshine left before the end of the day. Therefore, we jumped back in the car and followed the coastal road north, stopping almost at the tip of the Trotternish Peninsula at the end of the road to Borneskitaig. From here, it’s another short linear walk (around 2.5km) to the Cave of Gold – Skye’s version of Fingal’s Cave. This was another walk that we found in our Pocket Mountains guide – we’d never even heard of this place before flicking through the book.
Parking is free by the turning circle at the end of the road – make sure not to block access to the circle or local resident’s houses. The walk sets off along the coast and is pretty easy to navigate – just keep the cliff edge on your right and walk until you reach an old iron rod embedded in the ground. There is an indistinct grassy path, and evidence that when it’s not been dry for a long time, it might be very boggy!
On reaching the iron rod, you can turn right to walk down a steep eroded path to a rocky platform, where turning right again you can walk along to the end of the platform to view the hexagonal basalt columns and entrance to the Cave of Gold. Take care here, for I imagine when it’s wet the rocks here could be very slippery.
We spent a while admiring the cave (mainly Sam, as the wind was picking up and I decided that sitting down was preferable to standing up), then retraced our steps back up the steep path, turning right at the top to continue a little further along the coast. This took us to a lovely headland with a nice view over the scattered houses of Kilmuir, before we circled back around to return along the coast to the car.
Dog friendly rating – 3/5. This is another walk with no stiles, and there were no issues with our dogs. We kept leads on as there are steep drops all the way, and while we didn’t see any livestock, we did see plenty of ‘evidence’ that cows may roam the area from time to time.
Cnoc a’Mhadaidh Ruaidh
The second day of our trip dawned, if not exactly bright, dry and clear but extremely blustery. Nearly all of Skye was forecast for 45mph winds – not exactly the most pleasant walking weather. The sole exception to this was Kyleakin, the village which you may know as the location of the Skye bridge. I jumped onto Walkhighlands (an excellent free resource for finding walks all over Scotland) and picked out this 3km circular walk around Cnoc a’Mhadaidh Ruaidh, which, according to the sign at the start of the walk, translates to ‘Hill of the Fox’.
This is badged as a forestry walk, but most of the trees here had been felled when we visited. Nevertheless, it’s got good views in nearly all directions, and can be completed in an hour – perfect if the weather is a bit up and down.
There is free roadside parking at the start of the walk, and an interesting information board which outlines the two routes you can follow. The paths are clear and easy to follow, although they are rocky, boggy and uneven in places. While only a short walk, there is plenty of up and down, and we certainly felt like we’d done more than a short stroll when we got back to the car!
We saw only one other person, a local dog walker, as we made our way around the route. Not being one of the famous Skye tourist attractions and without the dramatic views on other walks, I’d be surprised if it’s ever busy here – but it’s a good option for a quick morning or afternoon leg stretch.
Dog friendly rating – 5/5. We had Coal off lead nearly all the way around this walk as there were no sheep knocking about, but we kept Merry on just on the off chance that a deer popped out from somewhere. There are no stiles to navigate, and Coal had a great time bog snorkelling at every opportunity – if your black lab finishes a walk as a chocolate lab, you know he’s had a wonderful time.
Kylerhea Otter Hide
After we’d finished in Kyleakin, we still had plenty of daylight left and it still wasn’t raining, so we drove across to Kylerhea Otter Hide. The drive down to the car park is along a very long, windy, single track road (thankfully with lots of passing places), but by the time you’ve arrived you feel like you are far, far away from civilisation. Once you drive round a corner and see a panoramic sea view open up in front of you, you’re nearly there. It was a bit of a shock to us to find a large, well surfaced car park waiting for us!
The car park is managed by Forestry and Land Scotland, who use the RingGo app to charge for parking. The route is a short linear, again from our Pocket Mountains guide, following the only way marked trail from the car park. ‘Way marked’ may be too strong a term: take the trail signposted to the otter hide, and follow it until you arrive.
The path is excellent: mostly flat and well surfaced. There are a number of interesting information boards scattered on the trail, providing information about the marine mammals you might spot off the coast. Best of all, there are clean and well maintained toilets which are open throughout the summer months!
My main experience of wildlife hides is a screen off a path, or a vaguely smelly hut which needs a good clean. The hide at Kylerhea is miles ahead of these: it’s large, clearly loved and looked after, and has plenty of information about the wildlife you might spot here. We didn’t see any otters (or anything else for that matter), but the view is outstanding in it’s own right. It’s the kind of hide where you could sit quite comfortably with a flask and a sandwich for hours waiting to spot some wildlife.
Dog friendly rating – 4/5. The walk down to the hide uses forestry tracks and we encountered no livestock, but keep an eye out for deer and other wildlife, and in the hide be considerate of other people using the hide who might not be dog lovers themselves. There are no stiles or other dog obstacles to worry about.
I’ll stop there for this week – no one wants to read a blog post that’s 10,000 words long! Make sure to come back next week for part two to find out what we got up to for the rest of the week. If you haven’t already, subscribe below so you never miss a post:
