Skye is the most dramatic place in Britain you can reach by road, and everyone now knows it, so the game is timing. The Old Man of Storr, the Quiraing, and the Fairy Pools are all genuinely worth the walk; all three car parks are full by mid-morning in summer.

Start one of them at 7am and you will meet the island the photographs promised. Portree, the pastel-harbored capital, is the sensible base, and its seafood is better than a town this size has any right to serve. Two honest notes: the Fairy Pools are a pleasant walk to cold plunge pools, not a swimming holiday, and phone signal disappears the moment you leave the main road, which turns out to be part of the point.

If mist eats the views for a day, the island's whisky distillery was built for exactly that weather.