Scotland's misty isle — Fairy Pools, Black Cuillin peaks, and the wildest landscape in Britain
The Isle of Skye is Scotland's second-largest island and its most dramatic — a place of black serrated mountain ridges, sea lochs cutting deep into the hills, ancient fairy-tale rock formations, and some of the most otherworldly landscapes in Europe. The Cuillin mountains are the most technically challenging peaks in the British Isles; the Fairy Pools at their base are a series of crystal-clear turquoise pools fed by waterfalls from the hills; the Old Man of Storr is an iconic basalt pinnacle on the Trotternish ridge. The island is connected to the mainland by bridge since 1995.
Skye has been inhabited for at least 7,000 years; the Dùn Scaich fort on the Sleat peninsula is traditionally the training ground of the Irish hero Cú Chulainn. The island's Gaelic culture was devastated by the Highland Clearances of the 18th and 19th centuries, when landlords evicted crofting communities to make way for sheep farming — whole villages were emptied and their inhabitants shipped to North America and Australia. The Skye Boat Song commemorates Bonnie Prince Charlie's escape to Skye after Culloden in 1746. Today Gaelic is still spoken in pockets of the island.