Excitement rises from the get-go. Ahead, a clearcut path leads through ankle-high heather across a landscape bound on either side by the Red and Black Cuillin, two dark-frowning massifs with deeply scarred features and bones of rugged gabbro. Even half-hidden in mist on this overcast morning, they are to me the most beautiful mountain ranges in Britain.
Yet beyond these, almost coming into the light between the two, is Sgùrr na Strì, a far more modest 494-metre knuckle of coagulated rock that threatens to upstage them. Many say the view from its summit is the most spectacular in Scotland, and the shifting of shadows from the hilltop’s panorama, across the Black Cuillin to Loch Coruisk, the Small Isles and the Sea of the Hebrides, make it feel as if it is always in motion.
I start the long walk to Sgùrr na Strì from the deserted trailhead at Sligachan Old Bridge car park in the middle of Skye, where this hike starts and ends. Another equally popular permutation involves a 20-minute rib boat crossing (£18, booking essential) from Elgol to Loch Coruisk, then a one-way, seven-mile walk, but I’ve opted for the lengthier, and free, round trip.
Though no longer in use, the much-photographed Sligachan Old Bridge is one of the reasons Skye has become an Instagram star in recent years, and today its surroundings blossom with the pleasures of the season. The river Sligachan is in full flow, the heather has softened from amethyst to light violet and the midges have disappeared.
An echo from a bellowing stag carries towards me – later I spot one nervously twitching far below the crumpled horn of Sgùrr nan Gillean, a mountain which has most visitors reaching for their camera.
Unusually for such a busy island, there are few people here, so the landscape retains the wildness that first nurtured two of Britain’s most renowned mountaineers. In the late 19th century, Skye-born crofter John MacKenzie became Britain’s first professional mountain guide. He was one of the first to recognise the opportunities in these hills, as was regular visitor Professor John Norman Collie: the pair formed a friendship in 1886 that saw them complete 10 of the first ascents of the then largely unmapped Cuillins. A knowledge of this helps tease out deeper meanings on the walk.
Fittingly, a memorial sculpture to the pioneers marks the start of the Sgùrr na Strì trail. The mountaineers are buried next to each other in Struan’s Bracadale Free Church graveyard on Skye’s west coast. Inseparable on the mountains in life, the pair are now inseparable in death.
More important than these totems, perhaps, is the legacy they left behind. What the pathfinders discovered in Skye’s hills was an astonishing sense of purpose. Mountains no longer appeared as forbidding barriers to travel, but places that could provide pure and simple pleasure, and the duo’s influence helped bring a living presence to the country’s most challenging peaks. Summits had always been unused spaces by people; now, crags and tors were scrambled and climbed. Thus was sanctified the almost holy pursuit of what is known as Munro bagging – the challenge to tick off all of Scotland’s 914-metre (3,000ft) tops.
There are 282 Munros altogether, and by the time I’ve moved deeper through Glen Sligachan’s peatlands, the footpath I am on is enriched by views of many of the most sublime. To the left of me is Blà Bheinn. To the right, up a scree-avalanched corrie, are Sgùrr Dubh Mòr, Sgùrr Alasdair and the high-steepled Inaccessible Pinnacle. There are clearly marked paths throughout the landscape, but a knowledge of map reading and a topographic GPS app on your phone are equally important before heading on to these well-traversed higher ridges.
I continue along the glen’s watershed, across land managed by the John Muir Trust, bog-dodging as the path becomes soggier, until I reach a fork in the trail at a large cairn. I feel a sudden urge to veer left, to the silver sands of Loch Scavaig, where wild campers pitch tents along the shore. But to my right, I start to see the switchback ascent up the Druim Hain towards my final destination and I know deep down I’m on the right path, which will position me perfectly on the gently sloping ridge.
Forty minutes later, past a small lochan and higher on to the crest, Sgùrr na Strì and the knife-cut Black Cuillin loom into hard focus.
At this point, on the hilltop, as on so many Hebridean walks, the path is overtaken by outcrops of crazy-paving rocks and the walk becomes a battle as I pick my own way between haphazard boulders along a broad south-westerly ridge to the top. In a rush, I take the most direct approach up the burn but, with trail running shoes on, instantly regret the decision. No matter: damp feet is a small price to pay as my endpoint beckons and the sun bursts through the clouds.
I finally reach the best view in the Highlands, at a cairn that looks as if it could blow off into the sea at any moment. And it is here that you should linger as long as the weather allows. Because while the scenery soars, the precipitous view is not just a reward for fans of geography or palaeogene geology. It is a place to pay homage to where the story of British mountaineering began.
Before sunset, the wind stirs and I turn for the return slog down Glen Sligachan. Seumas’ Bar awaits behind the Sligachan Hotel and, for around two hours, the white dot of the inn holds my vision. With a well-defined blister now on my heel, I finally reach its doors. Inside, the pub is where hikers drink deep and pass on their learnings after long days in the hills. Just as MacKenzie and Collie used to do with their own personal tales of passion and love for Skye’s mountains.
Google map of the route
Start Sligachan Old Bridge car park
End Seumas’ Bar
Distance 14.5 miles
Time 7-8 hours
Total ascent 645 metres (2,116ft)
Difficulty moderate
GPX map of the route at Ordnance Survey
The pub
Seumas’ Bar is named after a “wee dug” that used to frequent this dog-friendly drinking spot with its owners. It was built in the 1980s as an add-on to the Sligachan hotel, which has served mountaineers and scenery lovers since 1830 (and whisky lovers – there are 450 bottles to choose from).
Fittingly, the hotel has two other bars – Mackenzie’s Bar and Collie’s Lounge – named after the pair who helped lay the groundwork for Skye’s mountaineering present. But it’s the hangar-like Seumas’ Bar that’s the nerve centre of dirty boots and drying waterproofs; here hikers stride in on cold days like Scott of the Antarctic.
It’s also a setting for quickly disappearing pints: among the local brews on tap are those from the attached Cuillin Brewery. Its onsite shop sells Seaweed IPA and Coffee Milk Stout. I have an easygoing Eagle Ale and it hits the perfect note.
For a Highland pub with wild game, salmon and shellfish on the doorstep, the menu feels transported from a cafe in Glasgow’s boho Finnieston. Vegan dishes are the main event and, while the menu changes regularly, on my visit it’s heavy with vegetable soup, falafel, spiced aubergine curry and salted caramel cake. Note, the pub is only open from Wednesday to Sunday in winter.
Where to stay
The Sligachan hotel (doubles from £145) is a popular bolthole, offering 21 singles, twins, doubles and family rooms. The fourth-generation owners are descendants of the Campbells, who bought the hotel in 1913, and the existence of the dinky climbing museum is testament to the hearts and minds that turned the surrounding landscape from no man’s land into a walker’s playground. Breakfast is included and views of the mountains and mirrored surface of Loch Sligachan are gloriously free. The hotel is closed from mid‑December to mid-February.
