The Five Sisters of Kintail

Near Eilean Donan Castle in the Highlands of Scotland, we stayed at a small town called Dornie. Our host, Jennifer (a Canadian with a lovely combined accent from years in Scotland!) owns a small place on the edge of the tidal Loch Long, which joins into Loch Alsh and Loch Duich. As we got there about 6pm, we had a meal at the local pub (the best steak and kidney pie I’ve had for many years!) and then went for a drive to watch the setting sun over some of the most amazing scenery we saw in Scotland.

Jennifer had recommended two drives: a drive along Long Duich, cross the Rivers Croe and Shiel, take the road to Glenelg (from where you can catch a ferry to the Isle of Skye), and then come back the other way from Dornie and head to Kyle of Lochalsh and see the bridge to Skye.

The first drive towards Glenelg sees you climb up from the River Shiel to cross the mountains to drop back down to the ferry. Towards the top of the road there are some lookout spots (Màm Ratagan) that have the following views:

The view in front of you in Loch Duich, with the Rover Croe and its bridge for the A87 mid-left, and the road then following the bank of the Loch round to the River Shiel on the right. The hills on the other side of Glen Shiel are the Five Sisters of Kintail, (in the Gaelic – Sgùrr na Ciste Duibhe, Sgùrr na Càrnach, Sgùrr Fhuaran, Sgùrr nan Spàinteach and Sgùrr nan Saighead) and are spectacular, catching the setting sun beautifully. Three of them are 1,000m+ in height, making them ‘munros’ in UK mountain-climbing.

The photo was just three taken side by side, and then stitched together in Photoshop. The full size image is 20MB, but does make a lovely wallpaper spanned over two screens in Windows 10!