The lore
Deep time, silver screen, fairy folk.
≈ 170 m
years old — the age of the dinosaur footprints at An Corran & Brothers' Point
≈ 60 m
years ago — when Palaeogene volcanoes built the Black Cuillin
≈ 2.7 b
years — the age of Lewisian gneiss exposed in the south of the island
639 sq mi
of island, but more than 350 miles of coastline to wander
Jurassic Skye
The footprints of giants, still wet at low tide.
Skye is one of very few places on Earth where Middle Jurassic dinosaur trackways are exposed on a public shore. Sauropods the size of buses moved through a sub-tropical lagoon here — and the mud they pressed into is now the rock beneath your boots.
We never gather stones from the protected sites themselves. But the beaches all around them are seeded with jasper, ironstone and ammonite fragments shed from the same Jurassic cliffs.
Skye on screen
The island has been a star many times over.
- Highlander1986Connor MacLeod's clan home was filmed beneath the cliffs of Eilean Donan and across the Cuillin.
- Stardust2007The fallen-star fields and the witch's mountain were captured on Skye's Quiraing ridges.
- Prometheus2012The opening sequence sweeps over the Old Man of Storr in alien prologue.
- Snow White & the Huntsman2012Loch Coruisk and the Cuillin doubled for a hidden sanctuary.
- Macbeth2015Justin Kurzel's brutal vision used the bleak interior moors of Skye.
- Transformers: The Last Knight2017The Quiraing's serpentine ridges hosted Optimus Prime.
- BFG2016Spielberg's giant strode across the Trotternish landslip.
- King Arthur: Legend of the Sword2017Sword-pulling scenes shot at the Quiraing.
A dossier
James Bond in Scotland — five locations, five stones.
Sìthichean
And then, of course, the fairies.
The Fairy Pools, the Fairy Glen, the Fairy Bridge — Skye's place names betray a long conversation with the otherworld. Tradition says a stone from the right shore, kept in a window, will keep the house from harm. Whether you believe it is up to you.