travel to Lewis and Skye

Harris is actually the southern part of the same island as Lewis.

Will you have a car? What time of year? This year or next year? And where will you go after these islands?

Yes, there are ferries that you can take: https://www.calmac.co.uk/summer-timetables

You can take the train from Fort William to Mallaig (or drive) and catch the ferry from there to Armadale on Skye. From Skye, you can take the ferry from Uig to Tarbert on Harris (Lewis & Harris). You can also ferry from Stornaway to Ullapool. There are driving routes to get to Skye but I haven’t researched that. You can also fly from Stornaway back to Edinburgh.

Yes there are ferries as you say, BUT, they get booked up months in advance so you will need to book well in advance. It's not doable as a day trip and the ferries are subject to disruption for mechanical and weather related problems even in summer. I have had to find last minute accommodation many times on the Outer Hebrides when the ferry didn't run as planned.

Lewis and Harris is one island.

Jacqui (Skyegirl)

Thank you all. Very useful info.
Any recommendations for places to stay on Lewis/Harris? Should I book the ferries and then look for accommodation?

The two go hand in hand! You need to be sure can find and book accommodation before committing yourself to booking the ferry...

It is an absolutely lovely place to visit. I did at trip to Harris and Lewis about 15 years ago and really enjoyed it. We stayed at Doune Braes Hotel on Lewis and then at then at the Harris Hotel in Tarbert. I enjoyed them both.

BTW Ullapool is lovely. Think about spending the night there before heading over to Lewis. There are some nice walks in the hills above town that give marvelous views of the Loch and the Isles.

Hi Rita -

You can’t do a day trip from Skye to Lewis. I know because I’ve tried! It! Years ago when we were younger and possibly a bit dafter, my wife, her sister and myself were staying on Skye. Julie and I thought we could nip across to the Outer Hebrides for the day to tick a box, so to speak.

Julie’s sister drove us up to Uig - it’s not handily situated you’ll probably be unsurprised to learn - and we caught the ferry over to Tarbert as foot passengers. I’m a poor sailor at the best of times so it was a journey we endured rather than enjoyed as the ferry made a particularly choppy crossing.

On docking at Tarbert we got the bus to Stornaway. The conversation on the bus was entirely in Gaelic and we picked out only the odd word for which there is no Gaelic equivalent - ‘university’ being one as I recall. Talk about being a stranger in your own land!

The bus arrived in Stornaway at about noon and our calculations, made easier by the sparse bus timetable, revealed we had a whole forty minutes to explore the place before boarding the bus to take us back to Tarbert for the last ferry back to Uig. Now I’m sure things are rather different these days but back then Stornaway very sensibly closed for an hour for lunch. So coinciding with us alighting from the bus everything closed (on a more recent trip everything still closes on Sunday all day including the supermarket and the airport only opened at 6.00 pm when the flight from Inverness was due in). So we mooched around for thirty five minutes seeing what we might have at a different time before catching the bus back back to Tarbert and the return ferry to Skye, where we were collected again by Julie’s sister.

When she asked us what it was like our answers started “Weeelll……” so OK to tick a box but otherwise not a particularly illuminating experience unless you count the heroic whisky collection in the Tarbert Hotel bar!

Ian