Advantages: Tranquility; breathtaking scenery; friendly islanders Disadvantages: Wet and windy or Midgies - take your pick!
"'The Misty Isle' as the Isle of Skye is affectionately known (the Gaelic name is Eilean a' Cheo - pronounced Ellen a Kee-ow) is the largest of the Inner Hebridean Islands. The island lies about a mile off the north-west of Scotland.
Grab yourself a map, and if you live in the south of England, move your finger up the map following the coastline, up through the North of England, through the Scottish borders, up, up, up?. Wait! Stop! See, just to the left at the very edge of the coastline in the Highlands of Scotland you will see a tiny place called Kyle of Lochalsh. This is where, up until 1995, you would catch the ferry to the Isle of Skye. Then they built a bridge and tourism dropped dramatically because the tolls were very, very expensive at £5.70 each way. In 2005, the tolls were finally abolished and since then the island has ...
Advantages: Stunning landscape, nice towns to visit Disadvantages: None
The Isle of Skye is somewhere I have wanted to visit my whole life, but have never had the chance. The Scottish Isles for me have a sort of mystique about them, the isolation and the tradition they have, but Skye has always been the one I?ve wanted to go to. I think a lot of it has to do with my favourite band, Runrig, being from there ? their songs are often about the landscape they grew up in, and they even have a song called Skye.
Finally, at the end of September this year, I went to the island with my parents. Having been staying on the mainland for several days in rubbish weather, the first remotely decent day we had we jumped in the car and shot across the bridge, as they knew how excited I was to go to the island, and we didn?t want to miss the best weather we were likely to have (best in this sense is mainly dry with showers ...
Advantages: Lots to see Disadvantages: Admission charges
Even with all of today's mod cons like electricity and running water the Isle of Skye can still be quite an inhospitable place. In Gaelic it is known as Eilean Cheo (The Misty Isle) and its winters are amongst the harshest endured anywhere in the British Isles. Despite all of this humans have inhabited Skye for at least the last eight thousand years and over this period these people have adapted to cope with the environment. This way of life, which is unique to the Scottish Highlands, is known as crofting and crofting is still widely practised today.
A croft is traditionally a stone built house with a small patch of land around it that was used to grow crops and support a few animals. Typically a croft would have a few sheep, a couple of cows, some hens and even a pig or two. They would cut and dry peat from the land that provided fuel ...
