Psychologists say all people are either mountains or oceans. I don’t know what that means, but I’m definitely a mountain.
No disrespect to water, but I’ve always been drawn to massive hills. As a youngster they spoke to my dweeby Tolkien-sympathetic side. They were windswept, blasted, dramatic and cruel. Treacherous passes and passages to places otherwise impossible to access. In other words: mountains were cool.
As a result, the idea of a road trip through Scotland, the UK’s most mountainous region, always appealed to me. Setting off in a car, on an epic journey, through an unforgiving Highlands landscape. What’s not to love?
I’ll tell you what’s not to love: I can’t drive. Don’t look at me like that. For Londoners, owning a car is both relatively unnecessary and appallingly expensive. As a result I long ago made peace with the idea that I would never refill a petrol tank in the foothills of Ben Nevis or befriend a wandering Shetland pony. My Scottish driving dream would remain just that: a dream.
That was until the people at Sixt got in touch. Did I, they asked, want to borrow a car and go anywhere for an indefinite amount of time? Sixt is the only vehicle-hire service where you don’t need to put down a credit card (or pass a credit check) to hire a vehicle. Which means, theoretically, anyone with a debit card can stroll into one of their orange shops and drive away in a Jaguar half an hour later. My partner (who does drive, albeit nervously) didn’t fancy anything so ostentatious, and opted instead for an aubergine-coloured BMW 1 Series. A few swishes of an e-pen later and we were on our way.
Taking the high road
We leave Glasgow, following the Clyde as it weaves its way north east, from the city’s raggle-taggle suburbs towards the Erskine Bridge, where the mountains finally rise in earnest. And just like that, like a shabby drifter disrobing to reveal a statuesque and chiselled physique, the urban environment gives way to the Highlands.
The journey north west properly begins once the winding road fastens itself to the shores of a widening body of water. It is of course the largest surface-area lake in Britain: the ribbon-like Loch Lomond, a tourist destination in its own right and the inspiration behind Bill Murray’s favourite Scottish folk song. Loch Lomond is also considered the point at which the Scottish lowlands ends, and the speed with which the scenery morphs into full-blown wilderness is astonishing. The A82 sticks with the Loch through its entirety, mirroring every curve like an outline, until shooting out the end (past the allegedly haunted Drover’s Inn) onto one of the most memorable stretches of road in the whole journey.
The dense forest on our either side peels away, unleashing a broad valley painted in inexplicably (to me) autumnal colours in February. ‘It’s a glen!’ I shout triumphantly. ‘This is a glen!’ We race along, towards the rising peak of Ben Laoigh and the Tyndrum Hills, the River Fallock on one side and the frankly adorable West Highland Line (one of the world’s most scenic train routes) on the other. The whole thing – the wideness, the colour – looks distinctly Wild West.
From there the road attaches itself to a new friend; Loch Awe, the longest body of water in Scotland. It’s possible, from the car, to actually get a decent look at one of the lake’s most famous features: the borderline-camp St Conan’s Kirk, a waterside chapel built in the late 1800s, looking like something that could stimulate the imagination of even the most uninspired fantasy-romance novelist. True goths however, will want to keep their powder dry. Keep your cameras primed for the ghostly ruins of Kilchurn Castle, a 1400s fortress that was blown apart by lightning. ‘I think that might be the most heavy metal building in the world,’ I remark sagely, as it whizzes by and out of sight.
The shores of Linnhe
The Pierhouse hotel is waiting for us in Port Appin, a small and secluded village perched on the edge of an Argyll peninsula. It’s a heart-warming sight; the hotel’s two white-washed and rounded faces appear friendly, looking out across Loch Linnhe like an old couple, watching the tide together.
There can’t be many dining rooms in Scotland with a more spellbinding view. Even if the food was slop served in buckets, you’d still have a glorious time gazing out at the sun setting over the loch. Luckily, there’s nary a slop bucket in sight: the Michelin Guide-listed Pierhouse is in fact home to Scotland’s Chef of the Damn Year (my ‘damn’ added for emphasis), Michael Leathley. The menu is restlessly seasonal and so locally sourced that you can probably wave at your mussels and langoustines’ friends and family, from your table. My monkfish was cooked with expert precision (not a given with monkfish) and served with a punchy cassoulet. The cheddar souffle meanwhile was richer and more decadent than the aristocracy.
The environs of the Pierhouse are ideal for walking and bike rides. If the weather’s good it’s worth waking up early and catching the hourly ferry over to Lismore. We spent a good four hours marching up and down this bewitchingly isolated streak of land, and we barely covered a quarter of its length. Its north face is particularly lonesome and beautiful, home to Port Ramsay, a shore-side row of dainty lime burners’ cottages. A few miles on and you’ll find the imposing ivy-clad ruins of Castle Coeffin. Should the weather allow, intrepid visitors can scale its crumbling walls and stand in the remnants of its 13th-century great hall, surveying the sparkling waters of Linnhe like the MacDougall chieftains of old. Or you can just have a picnic in front of it.
Meanwhile, off the island, anyone wanting to experience Appin nightlife beyond the Pierhouse should book a table at the Old Inn. A 50-minute walk from the Pierhouse, this cosy restaurant (and it definitely is a restaurant, despite the name) specialises in steaks. And if you’re not yet tired of majestic, centuries-old fortresses rising up from the wilderness (the Highlands has a lot), it’s also the perfect place to gawp at Castle Stalker at sundown.
Welcome to Skye
If the scenery of the south-west Highlands is like going back hundreds of years in history, then traveling from Argyle to Skye is like going back thousands.
The sheer brutality and sparseness of the landscapes, the lack of human influence, brings to mind not lairds and castles, but barbarous ancient history. The starkness – detectable in every gun-metal grey body of water or vast and looming crag – is overwhelming.
It’s the alien and unknowable environment of Skye that makes encountering the bright red Café Cùil all the more incongruous. A roadside diner created in 2020, the thoroughly modern brunch spot has the feel of a Hackney small-plates restaurant built on the surface of the moon. It truly is surrounded by nothing. We park up and get chatting to proprietor Clare Coghill. She explains that she’d tried to do something similar in Dalston in 2019 but the pandemic forced her back home to Skye. She decided to basically press on regardless, swapping the Kingsland Road for the Cuillin hills.
‘I loved the excitement of Dalston,’ says Clare. ‘I made friends with my neighbours who ran corner shops and cocktail bars. Here on Skye, my nearest neighbours are the cows in the field, and I went to school with most of my produce suppliers.’
Any city mouse cynic expecting a clumsy provincial stab at hipster food will be disappointed. There’s a reason Cùil has a queue stretching out of its door most, if not all, days. Coghill turns out exceptional cuisine, with every plate arriving packed with flavour and colour. Their rarebit, served with beef brisket and Orkney cheddar sauce, is justifiably their signature dish, but everything we had, including the sweetcorn fritters and Scotch pancakes with electrifying Highlands rhubarb, was a knockout. Anyone driving through Skye owes themselves a stop at this remarkable operation.
Once the bridge to Skye is crossed, a different type of Scotland is encountered. Without wanting to get too happy or clappy, there is a tangible magic to the island. And not a cute, marketable magic, either. It’s something primaeval, ragged and pagan. Crofts and dwellings, forever bracing against an oncoming storm, are scattered across the barren and beautiful landscape. Cattle wanders all over the place. Everything is exposed to the elements.
The people, also, have a new-age streak that sets them apart from their more pragmatic (some might say dour) countrymen on the mainland. Every other person you meet in Skye seems to run a paint-therapy workshop, sews cable-knit sweaters or writes vaguely shamanic poetry.
We meet Donda, a notoriously garrulous local cab driver in his late 70s. He points out a small stone bridge, almost invisible in the scrubland, which straddles a modest stream.
‘That’s the Fairy Bridge,’ he says matter-of-factly. ‘The fairies live through there. It’s the entrance to their world. As a young man I would sit on that hill there at night and the fairies would come and sit near me. The funny thing was, they’d only appear after I’d been to the pub. And they must have liked the smell of old whiskey because the more of it I drank, the closer they’d come to say hello.’
We reach the Three Chimneys, a famous restaurant-with-rooms, located on the shores of Loch Dunvegan. The hotel section of the site has a bracingly Scandi vibe, all pale colours and minimal furnishings. The eatery (next door) meanwhile is textbook fine dining, with modern art hanging on the exposed-stone walls and an intimate 50-cover space. We opt for the full chef’s-table experience, keen to watch the burly boys toiling at the culinary coal face.
People from all over Britain (if not the world) travel to Skye specifically to dine at the Three Chimneys. It’s one of the most famous restaurants in the country (30 awards and counting) and its plaudits are well earned. This is fine dining, but with a friendly and accessible face. Dishes are finessed and immaculately assembled, but really this is food designed to make you smile not clap politely. Our tasting menu featured North Sea cod, with potted clam butter, paprika-cured monkfish, marinated Dunvegan langoustines and Glendale venison. All of it was presented with panache: a cavalcade of stunning plates, each one assembled from fresher-than-fresh locally sourced produce.
And don’t miss the opportunity to finish the meal with either a glass of Talisker whisky – the legendary local distillery with which the restaurant is closely associated – or a bit of their own Three Chimneys small-brand gin.
Land of legend
Ahead of us lay more Skye, more Scotland, more humbling wonder. We stumbled across Clachan Duich, the ancient hillside burial ground of Clan MacRae. Surrounded by the Five Sisters of Kintail, at the point where the River Crow meets Loch Duich, the dilapidated and storm-shattered churchyard stands alone on a slope. It’s definitely in the top five things I’ve ever spotted from inside a moving car.
The weather took a turn for the shitty on the following day, amplifying Skye’s brutal and intimidating aspect, until its mountains were shrouded in shifting clouds and every broad expanse of water transformed into shivering silver sheets.
We exited our car at the Fairy Pools, near Glenbrittle at the base of the Black Cuillin Mountains. Swarming with tourists during the summer months, the area was more or less deserted in February. A series of clear rock pools connected by streams and cascades, the Fairy Pools draws you up, pond by turquoise pond, towards the monumental landscape behind it. The weather cleared and we traveled further up the path, into a land of falling water and imperious summits that loomed like giants. After a few miles, the path underfoot now broken and dilapidated, it felt like we’d left civilisation behind entirely.
On the way back to the car, we passed a mother and her son going the opposite direction, towards the mountain. They were walking their pets, two shambling Muppet-like Shetland ponies. They were, it transpired, heading to a boat house for a party. The two ponies were also invited. Part of me wanted to go with them. But the clouds had gathered again.