The Isle of Skye on a Small Group Tour: Dunvegan Castle, Armadale and Portree

Skye is the largest of the Inner Hebrides and, for many people, the island that defines the Highlands: volcanic ridges, sea lochs on every side, and a history of clans, a fugitive prince and the crofting townships emptied by the Clearances. Many Isle of Skye tours are day trips from Portree or coach runs out of Inverness. Our Scottish Islands and Shetland small group tour does something different. Skye is one chapter of a 20-day journey through the islands, reached by sea from Mull, with two nights on the island and a final morning on the Trotternish peninsula before the ferry to the Outer Hebrides.

What most Isle of Skye tours offer, and what this one does

A day tour of Skye has to cover a lot of road in a few hours. Our approach is slower and wider. You arrive on Skye from the south by ferry and spend the first day with the Clan Donald story at Armadale. A full second day takes in Dunvegan Castle and its gardens, then Portree. The following morning the group drives north along Trotternish, past the Old Man of Storr and the Quiraing, to catch the ferry from Uig to the Outer Hebrides. Skye is not seen in isolation but as part of a route that runs from Arran to Shetland.

Is this a day tour of Skye from Portree?

No. Skye is a two-day stop, with a third morning on the island, within a 20-day tour of the Scottish islands, not a stand-alone excursion. If you want a single day on Skye from a base in Portree or Inverness, a local day tour will suit you better. If you want to see Skye alongside Mull, Iona, Lewis and Harris, Orkney and Shetland, travelling between them by ferry with the same small group, this is the tour for you.

Day 7: two ferries and Armadale

The journey to Skye is part of the experience. The group leaves Mull on the short crossing from Fishnish to Lochaline, drives across the Morvern peninsula and on to the fishing port of Mallaig, then takes a second ferry across the Sound of Sleat to Armadale, on the Sleat peninsula in the south of Skye.

At Armadale the tour visits Armadale Castle, the former home of the MacDonalds of Sleat, and the Clan Donald Visitors’ Centre in its grounds. The house, given its Gothic mock-castle front in 1815 by the architect James Gillespie Graham, was abandoned by the family in 1925 and is now a roofless ruin, but its woodland gardens are cared for and the centre’s museum tells the story of Clan Donald, once Lords of the Isles. It does not shy away from the Highland Clearances, which emptied so much of Skye in the nineteenth century. Our article on the Highland Clearances on Skye covers that history and the ruined townships it left behind. The group then transfers to the hotel (the Broadford Hotel or similar) in time for dinner together.

Day 8: Dunvegan Castle and Portree

The second day is a full exploration of the island. After breakfast the group drives west to Dunvegan Castle, the seat of the chiefs of Clan MacLeod. It stands on a rock above Loch Dunvegan, a sea loch on the north-west coast. First built in the thirteenth century, it grew piece by piece for six hundred years before a nineteenth-century remodelling gave it the battlemented outline it has today. The visit takes in the castle and its gardens, which include a Round Garden and a Walled Garden, with free time to explore them. The gardens are listed in Scotland’s national Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, and for travellers who enjoy historic gardens they are a quiet counterpoint to the castle’s long clan history.

From Dunvegan the group continues to Portree, Skye’s main town, to see its sights, including the harbour lined with painted houses that appears on so many postcards of the island. The group returns to the hotel in the late afternoon, and the rest of the day is free.

Day 9: the Old Man of Storr and the Quiraing

On the third morning the group drives north up the Trotternish peninsula, whose long escarpment is the longest landslip in Great Britain. The road passes the Storr, where the Old Man of Storr, a tall pinnacle of rock left behind by ancient landslips, stands below the cliffs above the Sound of Raasay, and stops to view it. Further north the group stops again to view the Quiraing, a vast hollow of rock towers and grassy plateaus on the eastern face of the ridge, with features named the Needle, the Table and the Prison. The Victorian poet Alexander Smith called it a nightmare of nature, and few visitors would disagree.

After free time for lunch in Uig, at your own cost, the group takes the ferry across the Little Minch to Tarbert on Harris, and drives up through Harris to Stornoway on Lewis for the next chapter of the journey.

How much walking is involved on Skye?

Less than the scenery suggests, because the Old Man of Storr and the Quiraing are viewed from stops along the road rather than climbed. The tour as a whole is rated Level 2 (Moderate): three to five hours of activity a day, which can mean walking the equivalent of up to 8 kilometres on uneven ground. On Skye much of it is in the castle gardens at Armadale and Dunvegan and around Portree, and the castle visit at Dunvegan can involve stairs, so comfortable shoes and a waterproof will serve you well. If you have questions about mobility, a Tour Specialist can talk through each day with you.

Where does the group stay on Skye?

Two nights at the Broadford Hotel or similar, in the south-east of the island. Dinner is included with the group on the first night, and the second evening is free for you to dine where you like. As on the rest of the tour, the pace is set for mature travellers, and solo travellers can book a room of their own.

Skye on the wider island route

Skye sits at the centre of the tour, after Arran, Mull and Iona and before the Outer Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland. Bonnie Prince Charlie came here as a fugitive after Culloden in 1746, crossing from the Outer Hebrides, and the abandoned crofts of the Clearances are reminders of how the island changed after him; both stories continue on Lewis and Harris, the tour’s next stop. Our route guide to Scottish island hopping, from Arran to Shetland follows the whole itinerary, and our overview of the best of the Scottish islands compares the island groups. The tour’s later chapters on Orkney and Shetland continue the story north.

Skye rewards travellers who give it more than a day and see it in its setting, reached by sea and left by sea, with Mull behind you and the Outer Hebrides ahead. You can read the full day-by-day itinerary on the Scottish Islands and Shetland tour page.