Skye in Pictures: Skye Villages

This is the Carbost with the distillery, not the Carbost near Portree. And, yes - Skye has a number of places which share the same name - it's an ancient Gaelic ploy designed to confuse the tourists.

So - Villages... Hmmm. On Skye, the locals refer to Portree as 'The Village'. It is the biggest settlement on Skye, and is commonly regarded as Skye's 'Capital'. With a resident population of about 2500, and a Gathering Hall rather than a Town House, the 'village' description is probably fair enough. Then we have Broadford (2nd biggest settlement - a spread-out sprawl of housing and a few shops) and Dunvegan (3rd biggest settlement - fewer shops than Broadford, but has a CASTLE).

After that, all other places are very small, and having grown as crofting communities, they tend to be spread over large areas, and are not clustered 'villages' as one might find in rural England or Wales. However, Carbost is an exception. It houses Skye's only whisky distillery, which at one time provided some local employment, and houses were built for its workers. (The distillery is nearly all automated now... there's barely any need for human intervention to make whisky these days). Carbost also has a pier, which was a calling point for the weekly puffer - a steam boat which once chugged around the Western Isles, collecting sheep for market and delivering coal for the kitchen range - as well as performing a thousand other vital services when road transport was very much less reliable than it is today.

Here are a few of my photos of Carbost as you might find it today...