Visiting the Isle of Skye with kids

Headed to Scotland for a family holiday and thinking about visiting the Isle of Skye with kids? We spent a day there with our kiddos and enjoy it very much, but going to the Isle of Skye with kids does present certain … limitations. This largest island of the Inner Hebrides is justly famous for the scenery and the hiking, and we are so happy we took the chance to scope it out. That said, it might have been a bit easier if we’d waited until the kids were older. Or a lot easier. Still, if you have the chance to go — don’t miss it. 

Pssst: read about our other travels in Scotland with kids here and here!

We were 15 minutes into our first hike on the Isle of Skye, and already three-quarters of the family were — openly or otherwise — questioning the wisdom of our planned day. My planned day, to be more accurate. And I was starting to worry.

Our first hike of the day* was to the famous Old Man of Storr, a large rock formation that is supposed to resemble the thumb of a giant. The scenery was already breath-taking, but the hike that had been described as “just slightly strenuous” on various blogs was starting out … not.

*Chris now snorts at the use of the ambitious words “first hike of the day.”

Backing up: while Chris was in charge of planning to Berlin portion of our trip, I was in charge of Scotland. I’d spent ages agonizing about whether the Isle of Skye should be on our itinerary for the eight total days we had for our Scotland road trip itinerary. On the one hand, it was sufficiently far out of the way that I feared how much time getting there would consume. On the other, I’d heard the scenery was so breathtaking that it couldn’t be missed. We ended up compromising by staying in a village on the mainland (Balmacara), then driving to Skye just for a single day. While certainly we could have spent more time on the Isle of Skye– and if hiking is your thing you certainly should — I thought this plan worked out well to give us a taste of the place without requiring an excessive amount of driving.

Breaking in here for a quick note about driving on the Isle of Skye, by the way: it went pretty smoothly! There was a serious lack of cell service that made navigation a little dicey, but since there was one main road we stayed on most of the time we were fine. And given how narrow some of the roads were, we were glad we didn’t end up getting our car rental stuck in a ditch on the Isle of Skye like a fellow blogger! Luckily this story had a happy ending.

So back to planning our trip. there were quite a lot of places that I wanted to visit on at Skye, chief among them being the Fairy Pools. Mostly based on stunning pictures I’d seen on Pinterest, ha.

But as I started to research various places to make an actual itinerary (obviously, this was like two days before we left), I started realizing how much walking most of these places were going to be. And that we were going to have to drag two kids with us to get to anywhere, so any of them were described as being a little slippery or having “a couple tricky spots” also needed to be out. Also, we don’t like spending too much time in the car so, you guessed it, other places were out.

That said, once I pared it down I was reasonably confident that I had an extremely do-able list, focused almost entirely on spots along the Trotternish Loop. Here’s what we came up with.

Our “itinerary” for the Isle of Skye with kids

1. Walk to the Old Man of Storr
2. Stop to see the Kilt Rock (just pull over and look)
3. Have lunch at the Skye Moon Cafe
4. Hike to Brother’s Point (good, lesser known trail that starts by the cafe)
5. Fairy Glen
6. Portree (the biggest city on Skye … I put this as  “maybe” on the list)

If you wondering how well we did on our list, our story begins with us on Stop 1.

So yeah, our “only slightly strenuous” hike was basically exhausting for us, especially as we were hauling a backpack full of snacks and water and extra clothing (Chris) and Fiona (me). Also, it seemed to be further than it sounded when I did the research.

The hardest part came at the very end, where you have to start walking up kind of a hill covered with rocks, some of which make sort of “steps” and others of which make obstacles. I’d read a blog where someone had done this with kids IN THE RAIN and said it was a bit tricky, and now after having done it I have no idea how those people managed to get up there on wet ground with kids in tow. Even very dry, we found it very slippery and hard to manage with the kids. If it were raining, we’d have turned back.

Despite the challenges (which in my case included slipping and having to crawl up a rock a bit with Fi stuck on me), the scenery was unbelievably beautiful. I was absolutely sure that once we reached the top, everyone would be overwhelmed by the beauty of our surroundings and full of a sense of accomplishment.

So while this was mid-hike for Owen …

There was not a drastic change once we arrived.

So, my plan didn’t so much work out on that front. Nor has the passage of time, apparently, softened his opinion of the whole thing. I just asked him what his favorite part of the hike was and he said, “There is no favorite part. The whole thing was horrible.”

Ouch.

I do want to give him enormous credit though, Owen walked almost the ENTIRE WAY on a walk that was tiring for us as adults. Lots of people stopped him on the trail to tell him he was doing a good job, which I think must have been gratifying at least. Note: if it was, he refuses to admit it. 

Anyway, if you are going to Isle of Skye with kids, I’d say the Old Man of Storr walk can be a good one. But if we were to do it again, I’d wait until the kids were a bit older and we didn’t have to carry them or worry about them falling as much.

So, once we made it back to our car the common consensus was that we were starving. We’d also spent a considerably amount of time cajoling Owen and Fi along by promising we could go to this brewery/restaurant we saw that had a playground outside, so that was our immediate priority. However, since it was 20 minutes of backtracking to get there and the Kilt Rock was just up the road, we decided to pop over there first.

From here, we headed to the Cuillin Brewery (more accurately, the restaurant that seemed to be attached to it — the brewery itself was closed when we visited, presumably because Sunday) for some very late lunch, beers, playground and general recovery.

We briefly kicked around trying to do one more thing, but then Fi smashed her face at the playground falling onto a post and we concluded that we were pretty much just done.

(At least, until we came across another lake that we just had to stop and stick our feet in on the way back!)

A note about Skye in general: Like with the rest of the Highlands, the scenery seemed very foreign to us, and beautiful. Despite there being plenty of other tourists there as well, when we were driving we mostly felt like we were alone in a strange wilderness. We got incredibly lucky with the weather too, but it was kind of an up-and-down thing. On the way in we celebrated how perfect it seemed, watched in disappointment as heavy clouds rolled in, then cheered again as they abruptly disappeared. Then repeated the process about three more times. Actually, the only times were we rained on the whole time we were in Scotland were when we were already in the car driving somewhere. Presumably this is because we dropped a bunch of money on raincoats that we carted around the whole trip. If you are headed to Isle of Skye with kids (or anywhere in Scotland), I’d highly suggest you do the same to ensure good weather. Or if you don’t believe in jinxes, you are welcome to think of it as just “being prepared” or “packing responsibly.”