The Isle of Skye by bus in August: what runs, what does not, and the midges

At 2:12pm on Thursday 13 August I stood at the Kilt Rock bus stop and read a timetable I should have read at breakfast. The bus back to Portree that I had counted on, the one I assumed ran every hour or so, did not run that way on a Thursday. The next one was at 4:20. That is two hours and eight minutes at a roadside on the Trotternish ridge, with a cliff, a waterfall viewpoint and no shop.

I had spent three days on Skye without a car in the second week of August 2026, and that afternoon was the clearest lesson of the trip. Skye has buses. They run where people live, and most of what visitors come for is a walk or a drive from those buses. I grew up on the island, which makes me a poor judge of how it looks to someone arriving fresh, so I set one hard rule: no lifts from anyone at home. What follows is the day-by-day account, what it cost, and a rule for deciding when a hire car is worth it.

The whole trip was eight nights, from Saturday 8 August to Sunday 16 August, by train and bus: two nights in Fort William, four in Portree and two in Inverness. The railway end is in our Glenfinnan and Jacobite guide. Samuel Adeyemi, who reviewed this piece, asked for my notes on the waits and the fares, and they are the backbone of what follows.

On Monday 10 August I took a mid-morning train from Fort William to Mallaig, about 90 minutes along the West Highland Line, then the CalMac ferry to Armadale, 45 minutes, then a bus on to Portree. Door to door it took 6 hours 10 minutes, and that included a 35-minute gap at Armadale that I had thought generous. I had booked the foot-passenger ticket online a week ahead, since CalMac asks everyone to book in summer.

The ferry docked about ten minutes late. The bus was still at the pier, and the driver was plain that it leaves on its own timetable whether the boat is late or not. The next one that suited me was well over two hours later. On Skye, connections are tight and nobody can promise you a second chance, so I now treat any plan that depends on one bus meeting one ferry as a plan with no slack. Wind cancels sailings on some days every year; keep a fallback, and read the part of our insurance guide that covers a cancelled crossing.

The other way in is the Skye Bridge, which coaches use from Fort William and Inverness. I used it on the way out and describe that coach below.

I booked four nights in Portree back in April, and even then rooms for the second week of August were thin. The only double I found at a sensible price was a guesthouse about four minutes' walk from the bus stops in Somerled Square. Without a car, that walk is the selling point of Portree as a base. A village such as Staffin suits an early start at the ridge, but only if you have wheels to get anywhere else.

Portree is where most of the island's buses start and finish. From there I made one bus day up the A855 to the Quiraing, one minibus tour to the southwest, and one bus day to the Storr and Kilt Rock. I paid the driver on every local bus, and a day ticket on the local network was about £10 each time. I did not need to book any of them.

Tuesday 11 August: the Quiraing on foot from Staffin

The bus up the A855 to Staffin took 45 minutes, and I got off in the village, because nothing goes to the Quiraing car park. From the stop to the car park is about 6 km of single-track road, nearly all uphill. It took me 1 hour 20 minutes with a pack. I reached the car park at 11:40, ate a sandwich on a wall, and started the circuit at 11:55.

The circuit took 3 hours 40 minutes with stops, including 25 minutes at the rock pinnacles to wait for a cloud to clear. I finished at 3:35pm, then walked back down the road in 55 minutes. My mistake was the road. I had read 6 km on the map and priced it at an hour each way, and uphill with a pack it was closer to an hour and a half. Count the tarmac as part of the walk.

I was at the Staffin stop at 4:30pm and the bus was due at 4:52. It was overcast, still and a little damp, and the midges found me inside four minutes. I lost count of bites at fourteen. I had put repellent on at 11 that morning and not since, so the cure was in my pack the whole time. The bus came on time and I was back in Portree at 5:37.

Wednesday 12 August: the Fairy Pools by minibus

I could not find a bus that put me at the Fairy Pools car park with time to walk, and I did not look for a creative answer, since the aim was to see what a visitor without a car could actually book. On Tuesday evening I bought a seat on a small-group minibus tour from a shopfront near the harbour, about £60 (check the operator). It left at 9:00 and was back at 5:00, eight hours for two stops: 75 minutes at the Fairy Pools and an hour at Dunvegan Castle, plus the driving between them.

The driver said the main car park fills by about 10 on dry August days, and we pulled in at 9:50 and took one of the last spaces. That is the best argument for a tour I have: someone else watched the clock. The tour's weakness is the same as its strength. Seventy-five minutes was enough to walk up to the lower pools and not the upper ones, and I wanted three hours. At Dunvegan I stood in the castle grounds at 2:40pm and the midges were worse than at Staffin, on a bright afternoon with no wind.

Neist Point, the lighthouse headland at the far west of the island, was not on the tour, and I found no bus to it either. It is the place I missed and the one I would drive for.

Thursday 13 August: the Storr, and the bus I invented

The first bus I could use up the A855 dropped me at the Old Man of Storr at 10:35. The walk to the pinnacles and back took 2 hours 25 minutes. The car park was full by 10:30, which I could see from the bus window, and nobody on the bus had to look for a space. That is the one real advantage of the bus on the Trotternish road. At the Storr, Highland Council's tariff was £6 for up to 6 hours when I looked at its page, and £3 for 3 hours at the Quiraing, so a car costs you a search for a space and the fee.

I took a bus north at 1:25 to Kilt Rock, 15 minutes up the road, and got off at 1:40 for the waterfall viewpoint. I was certain another would be back inside the hour. I had read the Tuesday sheet and assumed Thursday looked the same, and the pattern of departures changes with the day and the season. That is why I was at the stop at 2:12pm, reading the afternoon gap.

I spent the wait on the cliff edge, where a steady wind kept the midges off me entirely, and walked down to the stop at 4:05. The bus came at 4:26, six minutes late, and set me down in Portree at 5:10. What I lost was Fairy Glen, near Uig, which I had planned for that afternoon. No bus goes to the glen itself, only to Uig, and it sits a couple of kilometers up a single-track road. A plan that needs two buses and a walk in one afternoon needs the timetable on paper, and mine was on a phone with one bar of signal.

I grew up on Skye, so I will say what people at home say. Midges are the first thing visitors ask about and the last thing anyone can do much about. They are in season from late May into September, and I met them three times in four days: at the Staffin stop on Tuesday at 4:30pm, at Dunvegan on Wednesday at 2:40pm, and on the pavement outside the guesthouse on Monday at 9:15pm, when I stopped to phone home.

The three had the same ingredients: still air, no direct sun, and water or bracken within a hundred meters. Where I had none was at Kilt Rock, in a steady wind, and on the Quiraing circuit in the same wind. I got three bites at the Fairy Pools car park while waiting for the driver at 9:50 and none on the path by the water, where a light breeze came down the glen.

I carried a repellent with icaridin and put it on again every few hours. I also carried a head net that cost about £3 at a shop in Portree. It looks silly and works better than anything I put on my skin. Without a car, the bus stop is where you are exposed, since you stand still for as long as the timetable says, often at a bend near a burn. Keep the net in a jacket pocket and not at the bottom of the pack. Before you pick a day for a shoreline walk, check the online midge forecast. It covers the region, and it cannot tell you about your stop.

Rounded to the pound and checked against the operators' own pages on 24 September. Fares move, so check the operator before you book.

• Train, Fort William to Mallaig: about £15

• Ferry, Mallaig to Armadale, one adult on foot: under £10

• Local bus day tickets for Monday, Tuesday and Thursday: about £30 in all

• Minibus tour on Wednesday: about £60

• Coach, Portree to Inverness, on Friday 14 August: in the £20s, with a little over three and a half hours on the road. I booked two days before, and the later coach I first looked at had sold out.

That comes to roughly £140 for the whole journey from Fort William to Inverness, with four nights on Skye. A small hire car from Fort William for the same four days was about £70 a day in the quotes I took in July, around £280 before fuel, and I did not price a one-way fee for leaving it at Inverness. On money alone the bus wins by a wide margin.

Time tells the other half of the story. Across the trip I spent about two and a half hours waiting at stops on Tuesday and Thursday, plus 35 minutes at Armadale, and about two hours 15 minutes walking on tarmac to or from a trailhead. A car would have saved most of that, and it would have put Neist Point and Fairy Glen on the list.

Hire a car if two or more of these are on your list: Neist Point, Fairy Glen, the Fairy Pools at an off-peak hour, or any base other than Portree or Broadford. Hire one too if you only have two days, because the waits take a bigger share of a short trip. If single-track driving worries you, remember that the rule is simple: pull into the passing place on your side, or wait opposite one on the other side, and never stop in one to take a photo.

Stay on buses if you have three nights or more in Portree, if your list is the Storr, Kilt Rock and the Quiraing, and if a day tour for the southwest sounds like enough. Read the Thursday and Tuesday sheets separately, set a hard time for the last bus back, and put the head net in your pocket. The Trotternish guide has the stop order, and the Skye guide has the booking advice that applies to everyone.

Next time I would take three nights in Portree again, book the ferry a week ahead, take a tour for the southwest and ride the bus up Trotternish on the day the sheet shows the most departures. I still have not seen Neist Point or Fairy Glen.