Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
EATING AND DRINKING
Café Arriba
Quay Brae
T
01478 611830.
This local
institution packs in the punters. They come for a gossip over
the best coffee in town or tea served in large china pots as
much as the globe-trotting café menu of home-made
soups, wraps, pastas or posh lamb kebabs for around £8.
Easter-Oct daily 7am-6pm.
Harbour View
7 Bosville Terrace
T
01478 612069.
As cosy as the fisherman's front room it once was,
Portree's most romantic restaurant prepares the likes of
seared hake on puy lentils (£17) or Loch Eihort
moules
13
marinières
on a seafood menu.
Tues-Sun: March, April,
Nov & Dec 5.30-10pm; May-Oct noon-2.30pm &
5.30-10pm.
Isles Inn
Somerled Square
T
01478 612129.
With its
log fire and flagstone floors, this is the most appealing of
Portree's pubs; it also has the occasional ceilidh band.
Alongside Skye ales, it has a no-nonsense menu of fish and
chips, venison burgers or local Haggis, neeps and tatties
(£7-12).
Mon-Thurs 11am/noon-midnight, Fri & Sat
till 1am, Sun till 11pm.
Trotternish
Protruding twenty miles north of Portree, the
Trotternish peninsula
has some of the
island's most bizarre scenery, particularly on the east coast, where volcanic basalt has
pressed down on softer sandstone and limestone, causing massive landslides. hese, in
turn, have created sheer cliffs, peppered with outcrops of hard, wizened basalt -
pinnacles and pillars that are at their most eccentric in the
Quiraing
, above
Sta
n Bay
,
a long arc of beach just north of Sta
n village.
Old Man of Storr
6 miles north of Portree along the A855
he most celebrated column of rock on Skye, the
Old Man of Storr
is all that is left after
one massive landslip. Huge blocks of stone still occasionally break off the cliff of the
Storr (2358ft) above. A half-hour trek from a car park ascends to the pillar but don't
expect to have it to yourself - this is one of the island's signature sights.
Quiraing
Just past Sta
n Bay a single-track road cuts east across the peninsula into the
Quiraing
,
a spectacular area of rock pinnacles, sheer cliffs and strange rock formations produced
by rock slips. here are two
car parks
: from the first, beside a cemetery, it's a steep
half-hour climb to the rocks; from the second, on the saddle, it's a longer but more
gentle traverse. Once you're among the rocks, you can make out “he Prison” to your
right, and the 131ft “Needle”, to your left. “he Table”, a sunken platform where locals
used to play shinty, lies a further fifteen-minute scramble up the rocks.
Skye Museum of Island Life
Main road, 2 miles west of Duntulm • Easter-Oct Mon-Sat 9.30am-5pm • £2.50 •
T
01470 552206,
W
skyemuseum.co.uk
It's a short trip from Duntulm to the best of the island's folk museums. Run by locals, the
museum - an impressive pair of thatched blackhouses furnished with home furnishing
and farming tools - provides an insight into a way of life commonplace only a century
ago. Behind the museum are the graves of
Flora MacDonald
, heroine during Bonnie
Prince Charlie's flight, and her husband. Such was her fame the original mausoleum fell
victim to souvenir hunters and had to be replaced. he Celtic cross headstone is inscribed
with a tribute by Dr Johnson, who visited her in 1773: “Her name will be mentioned in
history, if courage and fidelity be virtues mentioned with honour.”
Uig
Skye's chief ferry port for the Western Isles is
UIG
(Uige; pronounced “oo-ig”), which
curves its way round a dramatic, horseshoe bay. Most folk are just passing through, but
if you've time to kill, take the lovely, gentle
walk
up Glen Uig, better known as the
Faerie Glen
, a Hobbity landscape of miniature hills at the east end of the bay.
