The white lighthouse at the westernmost tip of Skye, reached by a steep path down towards the basalt cliffs and stacks
Neist Point is the western-most tip of Skye, a finger of land that pokes out into the sea beyond Glendale, and the lighthouse sits near the end of it below the cliffs. The Stevenson family, who engineered most of Scotland’s lights, built it in the early twentieth century, and it is a plain white tower with keepers’ cottages beside it. The light is automated now, so no one lives out there.
The reason people make the drive is partly the lighthouse and partly the walk out to it. From the car park a steep concrete path drops down and then runs along above the sea, with basalt cliffs, offshore stacks and the big headland of Waterstein Head rising to the north. It is one of the most photographed spots in the Hebrides, and it is at its best at sunset, when the light comes in low off the water.
The path down is fine in decent weather but it is properly steep, and just as steep coming back up, so take your time and wear something with grip. There is nothing out at the point itself, no shop or café, so bring what you need. It is a good half-hour or so of narrow single-track road from the nearest village at Glendale; for a meal afterwards the well-known restaurant at The Three Chimneys is over on the far side of the peninsula. The headland of Neist Point itself is worth wandering out onto for the wider view.
