One-Day Circumnavigation of Skye on the PS Waverley

By Paul Bryers; May 14, 2026

My new ride, Dr Z, handled the windy roads beautifully – up Loch Lomond, across to Crianlarich, through the brooding majesty of Glencoe and on to Kyle of Lochalsh. The man and his machine, in perfect harmony. Mostly.

I spent the night in a wee cosy bothy near Eilean Donan Castle – modern, snug, and mercifully midge-free.

In the morning, I trundled a few miles to Kyle Pier to board the last seagoing paddle steamer on Earth, the magnificent PS Waverley.

Overall, the weather was windy, cool, with the odd shower spitting down out of spite. Perfect Scottish cruising weather, in other words.

Under the Skye Bridge we slipped, then roughly north past the Red Cuillins – smooth-shouldered hills with a genuinely reddish hue, looking rather sheepish next to their darker cousins to come.

Threading east of Scalpay and west of Raasay, we approached Portree on a very tight heading. Alas, it was not to be. We bottled it at the last moment – too windy to dock – and waved cheerfully at the abandoned souls on the pier as we sailed merrily off without them. These things happen. To them, mostly.

Anchored just outside Portree sat the MV Hebridean Princess, formerly CalMac’s MV Columba and which once ferried the young Bryers clan from Oban to Coll in the 60s and 70s. A small, salty nod from the past.

Then the cliffs got interesting. As we neared The Storr, the Old Man himself put on quite a show — winking in and out of existence through the shifting light, a great phallic spire thrusting up through the rocky crust, slowly being humbled by the elements. Dr Z, incidentally, is finished in Storr Green, which prompted a moment of quiet reflection on the fact that my car’s color looks absolutely nothing like the Old Man. Probably for the best.

Lealt Falls and Kilt Rock followed in quick succession – the latter genuinely surreal, its waterfall snatched up by the wind and flung skywards in a fine misty rebellion against gravity.

Then the otherworldly Quiraing hove into view. Splendid is the only word. Splendid and slightly unreal, like a landscape that got lost on its way to a fantasy novel.

Past Waternish Lighthouse, we called into Uig and collected a couple of passengers who’d had the wit to drive over from Portree. Well played, those two.

After Neist Point Lighthouse we struck out across open water, past Canna, Rum, Eigg and Muck – the Small Isles laid out like a tasting menu. A white yacht glided northeast in the sunlight, with the MV Glen Sannox brooding on the horizon behind it (still afloat, against the odds).

Then the Black Cuillins. Dark, jagged, tops swallowed by Mordor clouds — the geological equivalent of someone refusing to make eye contact.

The Silver Sands of Morar glimmered faintly in the distance, and finally we threaded the Narrows between Glenelg and Kylerhea, with the tide doing most of the steering. Thirty-nine minutes later, we were back in Kyle.