The steep descent and hairpin bends going into Uig were a surprise, as was the oncoming traffic at the worst possible moments. We missed the turning to the Fairy Glen, with no opportunity to stop or turn round for miles and had to go back to Sligachan to take the road to Talisker and Glenbrittle. We should have heeded the scarecrow’s warning ⚠️ “Substandard roads for the next 10 miles” 🙄 He wasn’t wrong.

Clearly, the multi-million pound global business uses transport by sea rather than road, but you’d think they’d get plenty of grief from their Porsche-driving clientèle whose tyres get wrecked trekking out there.

We’ve done a million distillery tours and after having been suitably rattled from pothole to pothole, narrowly missing other vehicles doing the same , just did a quick trot round the gift shop.

We were keen to head out to the coast and had planned on 2 nights at Glenbrittle Bay campsite. If you look at their Instagram it looks idyllic, and I was really looking forward to it as I’d had a couple of recommendations for it to be the ideal place to relax and unplug. The unplugging was unavoidable as there was no means of communicating with the outside world until you leave. Relaxation didn’t really figure too much either.

The trauma of the drive down has thankfully mostly been erased, but I still have nightmares about the pothole so deep it had a traffic cone in it, and the hooning great motorhomes steaming towards us unawares of there being no passing places on that stretch of road (clearly eyes on the views, which were nice enough). It was really deceptive because you drop down from the hills, agonising though it is, and you think, cool – almost there then. But no. Several more miles of jumping on brakes, swerving to avoid deep potholes, not always missing and thinking you’ve knackered the van.

We did see the car park for the Fairy Pools on the way down, but saved it for another day. We’re still saving it.

We checked in on arrival at the hipster coffee shop/reception. We paid 47 ***ing quid a night. The most expensive site on this, or any other trip. So you’d think we were in for a treat. Yes, we were, but in the same way that the roads were a treat.

They don’t do prebooking, so you drive all that way and take your chances. Of the 120 pitches, they only have 6 hard standing. The rest are on the dunes, so sloping. EHU was no problem, thankfully. The facilities were at the far end of the site. We were somewhere in the middle, so had a sizeable walk for a peanut.

To appease Mother’s curiosity, the facilities were as follows: accessed by a code, due to folk wanting to park their breakfast but not pay the hefty site fees. 3 cubicles in the ladies. For 120 pitches. 2 small sinks. 1 hand dryer. Another code to access the shower room. Flooded. Did not use.

There’s not much more to say about this, other than we cut our losses after one night and left. They were decent enough to refund us the 2nd night.

We headed back to Broadford, but the site there was full, so we skipped over the bridge and bedded down at Reraig, which was lovely. The original plan had been to take the Glenelg turntable ferry, but one look at the Mountain road leading there gave me PTSD.

We headed north to Laide for a family catch up. It doesn’t get any uglier up there!

On our journey south we took in Rogie Falls

And we finished the day with a motorway services tea at Abington and a cheeky stop at Lettershaws Farm.

We stayed there during lockdown and it cost us a tenner. Not much different this time, except we stayed on hardstanding, used the facilities, and got snowed on overnight!

We went back to Abington services for breakfast as we were convinced we had no gas left, so did bacon butties and hash browns to give us energy for visiting the Kelpies on our trek home.

We missed the window for a tour inside and didn’t want to hang around for 2 hours to wait for the next one, so mucked about a bit and left.

We crossed the border and headed for the South Yorkshire Technology Corridor.

Both of us felt that Skye wasn’t as good as we were expecting, despite some very good bits. So whilst we may not need to go back, there’s plenty more Scottish regions and islands to explore.

#CampervanCapers