As those who know me will know, Mrs W and I have been visiting the Isle of Skye now for 18 years, almost exclusively at two particular houses, one of which became our ‘second home/bolthole’. It was a place to escape to, to get away from the main stream and experience, albeit briefly, a gentler, more civilized lifestyle. Or it was a place to escape into the barren, dark, imposing and dramatic surroundings such as the black Cuillins where you could challenge yourself in an empty landscape and experience true silence.
Skye now though is not what it was. When we first visited, it felt like a different country – somewhere beautiful and yet somewhat mysterious in a way, with the local population seemingly very much in touch with their Gaelic roots, music and language and a feeling that we were really on the edge of the UK.
Over the years though progressively increasing tick-box tourism, now that Skye has been ‘discovered’, has led much of the Island’s character and desolate beauty being swept away in a tide of tarmac covered redevelopment to cater for the clamouring hordes of check box tourists in rentals cars, minibus tours, coach tours and hired motor homes, moving from guide book highlight to guide book highlight for yet another selfie in the increasingly busy and eroding landscape – with the effect that Skye is now full of the sorts of people we went to Skye to escape from. The South East of England has also decided that it is the place to be seen to live, gobbling up all available properties and development plots, so much so that you are more likely to hear the home counties bray of a retired solicitor or accountant than the beautiful soft burr of the local accent.
About four years ago I wrote the review below on Trip Advisor about what had happened to one prime example, the Old Man of Storr, as a result of seeing how it had been ruined as a result of excessive visitors. Sounds grumpy, but things have got progressively worse since then.
Such a shame but now ruined, like so much of Skye, by excess tourism and over-development and in fact the Old Man experience has become the touchstone for the ruination of the Island as a whole.
Once you would drive to the little lay-by-cum car park, when more than 6 cars parked constituted it being “busy”, walk through the wooden gate into the woods and wander up through the characterful woodland (especially magical in snow), finally emerging to see the old man and the Storr in front of you. Climbing up the then unspoilt landscape, during which you may see 3 or 4 other people at most, you could experience the splendour, isolation, character and beauty.
Then the destruction and despoilation began. First the deforestation which was supposed to lead to the planting and reintroduction of more “native“ broadleaf trees but which never happened, leaving you to walk through what resembled a post apocalyptic battlefield.
Next the hordes of tick-box tourists arrived, numbers boosted by the seemingly endless flow of guided minibus tours, which have long blighted the island but which have become a serious problem in recent years. Thus the “Old Man” experience became the one you have now – one of being herded along a conveyor belt of people walking up and down through the increasingly eroded landscape for a brief selfie.
Now of course parking has had to be increased as a result- first the tarmac pay and display along the verges and now the huge car parks( to accommodate the 100+ vehicles regularly seen there) nearing completion, destroying the final vestiges of the character of the area below the Storr. And they’re sweeping away the old lay-by-cum car park too.
So if you’re looking to enjoy a visit as described in your guidebook, you’re about 5 years too late at least.