From Fairy Tales to Fish Tails!
- Ashleigh Aiano
- Jun 27, 2018
- 3 min read
The Journey - Our roadtrip happened to fall the day after an amazing evening at wembley stadium watching the one and only Ed Sheeran, so I was fully prepared for hours of singing along to Ed in the car up to Scotland! However leaving at 3 in the morning didn't have all of us in the best of moods so I had to scrap that idea and settle for a bit more of a low-key roadtrip. The motorway and kentish scenery (which mostly consists of bushes and the odd sheep field) seemed to drag on for hours, by this point we weren't so enthusiastic about the 13 hours ahead of us, a few food stops were required in order to keep our spirits alive!
However once we were approaching Skye things started to get a little more interesting, I finally was a part of the fun roadtrip I'd hoped for! Moods were lifted as we sang to our favourite songs and enjoyed the beautiful yet rugged scenery that surrounded us! For those of you considering a trip to Skye, I'd definitely recommend taking your time with the journey, explore at your own pace, you'll find yourself wanting to stop at every corner, the windy narrow country roads and raw scenery make for some picture perfect moments!

Despite being constantly distracted by the stunning scenery (and getting slightly lost along the way) we arrived at our scottish cottage in Kildonan with time to settle in and get some much needed rest for the week ahead of us.
The next morning, wasting no time at all we headed off to our first hike, The Fairy Glen! Personally I wouldn't actually refer to this one as a hike, the terrain was fairly easy to cover. It mostly consisted of dry, grassy walking, although we did manage to find ourselves awkwardly scrambling up a few rocks towards the top of the summit. The most popular part of Fairy Glen is the rock formation that supposedly resembles a castle and the giant spiral of stones on the grass. As interesting as the main attractions are, they weren't my favourite part of fairy glen. Once you move your eyes away from the direction everybody else is looking, you'll see some other sweet features of the area that usually go unappreciated!
Overall, the Fairy Glen wasn't my favourite place, but it probably is one of the cutest places to visit in Skye. When you walk the path through the crooked, gnarly trees covered in moss you can certainly see why people refer to it as some kind of fairy land! It's very well hidden and feels slightly enchanting, the cone-shaped hills and scattered waterfalls make it feel like a shrunken scale of a large geological wonder.





After only one day in the Isle Of Skye we already started to notice the lack of shops, and, well, any kind of civilization in general! So we decided to go somewhere a little more populated and headed further south to the capital of Skye - Portree. When I hear the word 'Capital' I immediately relate it to big cities, or at least somewhere rather busy! However Portree appears to be just another quaint little town, much like the ones I'm used to seeing in Kent. Although it does have a certain charm to it, I can't quite put my finger on what makes it such a nice place to visit, perhaps it's the colourful harbour or just the feeling of the locals going about their daily business! If you take a stroll down to the harbour, you'll see the many fisherman preparing to feed the Sea Eagle, which was re-introduced to Skye in the 1970's after becoming extinct in Britain around the 1900's. For this reason Skye is very popular among animal enthusiasts, I'll mention that in further detail in one of my future blog posts.
This somewhat small 200 year old village does offer more than one would expect upon seeing it, it has all the necessities such as banks, cafes and restaurants, but also has it's very own cinema, library, swimming pool, school, gift and book shops and a tourist information centre! So don't let it's appearance fool you, Portree is all that you could wish for when looking for a capital.



As we made our way back to the cottage I could tell we would have an amazing week ahead of us. This was a fairly easy going day to try and break ourselves into the Skye lifestyle, the evenings in Skye are very long this time of year so what better way to finish the day than to sit around playing cards, chatting about ongoing events and watching the sunset over the lake by our cottage ♥
Comments