Glenbrittle

Where the road meets the sea

The road runs out at a sandy beach, where the River Brittle spreads into Loch Brittle and the tide leaves a broad estuary looking down the water towards the open sea. Behind you the Black Cuillin rises straight out of the glen, dark and jagged and directly east of everything you do here. Glenbrittle is the scattered community strung along the western flank of that ridge. It is where the tarmac ends, at the campsite.

There is no pub in the glen and little in the way of shops. At the campsite beside the beach, Cuillin Coffee Co. is a seasonal café on the MacLeod Estate, serving artisan coffee, freshly baked bread and croissants, soup, cakes, sourdough pizzas, tarts and spicy Mexican bean rolls. The adjoining shop sells gifts and camping equipment.

Campsite life and the Fairy Pools

The campsite dates from 1961, has 160 pitches and won Gold Campsite of the Year at the 2019 Great Outdoors Magazine Awards. Dogs are welcome if kept under control. There is no Wi-Fi, and mobile reception is intermittent.

The Fairy Pools draw many visitors down the single-track road: a chain of clear pools and waterfalls in the upper valley. The path to the first pools is shorter, while the full circuit around Coire na Creiche covers about five miles. The community-owned car park has 177 spaces and can fill in high season; its income supports Minginish community projects, paths and environmental restoration. The road and car park are unsuitable for large coaches, and traffic builds up at busy times. The pools and Carbost are the nearest places with 4G reception from the campsite.

High corries and a memorial hut

For something harder, the walk to Coire Lagan starts above the beach and climbs to a blue lochan ringed by slabs and stone chutes, with Rum and Eigg out to sea and Sgùrr Alasdair and the Inaccessible Pinnacle overhead. It ends in rough ground and a short scramble. Gentler is the forest circuit over Bealach Brittle towards Loch Eynort, ten waymarked miles with a kayak launch and sea eagles over the estuary.

Above the campsite stands the Glen Brittle Memorial Hut, built by public appeal as a war memorial to mountaineers killed in the Second World War and opened in 1965. Its prime mover, Harry Spilsbury, had been a prisoner of war in the first war and kept running the place until he died on Beinn Alligin in 1970. Inside there is a plaque to Mick Burke, the climber and cameraman lost near the summit of Everest in 1975, and a visitors' book that records Lord Hunt signing in on his way through in 1966.

Clan echoes and Carbost

The glen keeps older stories too. Coire na Creiche, the corrie of the spoil, was where the MacLeods and Macdonalds fought in 1601, probably the last great clan battle on Skye. Lower down, forestry clearance uncovered the low walls of Brunell, a township of houses, byres, barns and corn-drying kilns likely abandoned by the mid-nineteenth century.

For a proper pub you drive the twelve kilometres or so back to Carbost, where the Old Inn sits on Loch Harport with open fires, a pool table and three changing cask beers, usually from Cuillin or the Isle of Skye brewery. Talisker Distillery is in the same village, founded by the MacAskill brothers in 1830 and still working.

Last light on the ridge

In the evening the tents empty onto the sand, the ridge turns black against the last of the light, and there is little to do but watch it go.