Camping on the Isle of Skye

Skye has the most concentrated dramatic landscape in Britain: a ridge of collapsed landslip at Trotternish, a gabbro mountain range at the Cuillin that is the only genuinely alpine terrain in the country, and a coastline of sea stacks and basalt columns between them.

It also receives well over half a million visitors a year on a road network built for a few thousand islanders, and the difference between a good Skye trip and a frustrating one is almost entirely about timing.

The north: Trotternish

The Quiraing is the most spectacular short walk in Scotland — a four-mile circuit through a landslip of pinnacles and hidden plateaus, on a path with genuine exposure in one section. The Old Man of Storr is shorter, steeper and busier still; go at first light or you will not park.

Continue round the peninsula for Kilt Rock, Mealt Falls and the dinosaur footprints at An Corran when the tide is out.

The Cuillin

The Black Cuillin ridge is a rock-climbing objective rather than a walk: the traverse involves abseiling and roped moving on gabbro, and the compass is unreliable because the rock is magnetic. Guides operate from Glenbrittle and Sligachan.

For walkers, Coire Lagan from Glenbrittle gets you into the heart of the range and back in half a day, and Bruach na Frìthe is the one Cuillin summit reachable without scrambling.

Practicalities

Roadside camping and overnight parking in laybys are now actively discouraged and restricted at the honeypots. Book a pitch; do not assume you will find one on arrival in summer.

Fuel, cash machines and food shops are concentrated in Portree and Broadford. The single-track roads work on passing places — pull in, do not reverse into one at speed, and let following traffic past.