Fairy Glen

Fairy Glen

Route: Fairy Glen

Area: Scotland, Northern Skye

Date of walk: 5th March 2018

Walkers: Andrew and Gilly

Distance: 2.0 miles

Ascent: 300 feet

Weather: Constant drizzle

We’d booked a short stay on the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides. Stage 1 of our journey involved a lengthy drive from the Lake District to the Glencoe area, where we stayed overnight at Craiglinnhe, an excellent B&B on the shore of Loch Linnhe. We wished we’d had more time to explore the area as the scenery was spectacular, but hope to return for a longer visit

Stage 2 was today’s car journey to Uig on Skye in order to catch next morning’s ferry to Harris. We arrived in Uig with only time for a short afternoon walk, and decided to visit Fairy Glen, an unusual valley just a few minutes away from our base – The Ferry Inn, which we can also highly recommend

Fairy Glen (sometimes spelt Faerie Glen) is a weird miniature landscape of grassy, cone-shaped hills.  One of the hills still has its basalt topping intact which, from a distance, looks like a ruin and is called Castle Ewan

Numerous small paths wind around the peculiar little hills and there is no set route to follow, which is half the fun of this short walk. There are an infinite number of possibilities. We simply walked along one side of the glen and back along the other. There’s no fear of getting lost as the small access road runs through the middle of the glen.

Constant drizzle, blown into the lens by a cold wind, caused a few problems with the photographs but I hope that the ones which follow will convey the mysterious and other-worldly nature of this lovely place

Click on the icon below for the route map (subscribers to OS Maps can view detailed maps of the route, visualise it in aerial 3D, and download the GPX file. Non-subscribers will see a base map)

Scroll down – or click on any photo to enlarge it and you can then view as a slideshow

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