The Cuillin, and a coast that won't lie flat

Most British hills, seen from a distance, resolve themselves into something manageable: a green slope, a rounded top, a path somebody has clearly walked before. The Black Cuillin on Skye does not do this. Even from several miles offshore, the ridge holds its shape as a jagged, near-vertical wall of dark rock, and getting closer only confirms the first impression rather than softening it. This is one of the very few mountain ranges in Britain that looks, from any angle, exactly as difficult as it actually is.

Rock that behaves differently

The Cuillin's character comes down to what it is made of. The Black Cuillin is gabbro, a coarse volcanic rock that grips a boot sole unusually well, which is just as well, because much of the classic traverse along its ridge involves scrambling over knife-edged rock rather than walking a path in any normal sense. The full ridge traverse, all eleven kilometres and more than a dozen summits of it, including the notorious Inaccessible Pinnacle, a blade of rock near the highest point that genuinely requires a rope to climb safely, is reckoned among the hardest single days of mountain walking in the British Isles, attempted by serious hillwalkers and turned back on by a good many of them. Across a glen to the east, the Red Cuillin is an entirely different proposition: rounded granite hills, softer scree slopes, and walking that ordinary boots and an ordinary level of fitness can manage without difficulty. The contrast between the two ranges, separated by barely a mile, is as sharp as anything Skye offers.

Portree, and the island behind it

Ships calling at Skye anchor off Portree, the island's only town of any size, whose harbour is ringed with brightly painted houses climbing the slope above the water, a view that has made it one of the most photographed small harbours in Scotland. The town itself dates largely from the eighteenth century, laid out as a planned settlement by the MacDonald estate, and it remains the practical centre of an island whose population has never fully recovered from the Highland Clearances of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when tenant farmers across Skye were evicted in large numbers to make way for more profitable sheep, and many emigrated to Canada rather than stay.

Further north-west, Dunvegan Castle has been the seat of Clan MacLeod since around the thirteenth century, and is claimed as the oldest continuously inhabited castle in Scotland, a claim several other Scottish castles also make with equal conviction. Skye itself was linked to the mainland by a permanent bridge only in 1995, ending a centuries-old dependence on ferries that some islanders still speak of with a degree of nostalgia the bridge's convenience has never quite erased.

Getting there, and what a day allows

A call at Portree gives most passengers a choice between the town itself, an easy stroll with views back out to the anchored ship, and an organised excursion further into the island towards Dunvegan or the lower slopes of the Cuillin. Nobody without a guide and the right experience should attempt the ridge itself from a single day ashore; it is not that kind of walk. Fred. Olsen's Scenic Islands and Highlands of Scotland, nine nights from Newcastle, calls at Portree between Lerwick and a run of sail-bys past Staffa and Duart Castle, with Invergordon and Kirkwall either side.

Wild Beauty of the Scottish Isles, seven nights from Newcastle, and the longer Scenic Summertime Scottish Isles from Southampton both include Portree in a similar run of Hebridean stops, timed for the months when the ridge is clear of snow and the crossing to the anchorage is at its calmest.

Even for passengers who never leave Portree's harbourfront, the Cuillin does most of the work simply by being visible, on the days it chooses to be. The ridge draws its own weather more often than most Scottish hills, wrapping its upper slopes in cloud while the harbour below sits in sunshine, and a clear view of the whole skyline from the water is not something any itinerary can promise. When it does clear, though, it is not a backdrop that asks to be admired quietly; it asks to be noticed, and it generally succeeds.