The 5 Best Mountains in The Hebrides, Scotland

The Black Cuillin are a world famous range of mountains on the Isle of Skye. Mainly composed of basalt and gabbro, it is from the dark colour of the gabbro that the Black Cuillin derives its name. The summits of the Cuillin are bare rock, jagged in outline and with steep cliffs and deep cut corries and gullies. All twelve Munros on Skye are Black Cuillin peaks except for Blaven which belongs to a group of outliers separated from the main ridge by Glen Sligachan. The highest point of the Black Cuillin is Sgùrr Alasdair at 992m (3,255ft). At the heart of The Cuillin lies one of Britain's most famous corrie’s, Loch Coruisk, a deep and forbidding body of water. It has inspired countless artists such as William Turner and Sir Walter Scott who described them after his visit in 1814: ‘We were now under the western termination of the high mountains of Cuillin, whose weather-beaten and serrated peaks we had admired at a distance from Dunvegan. They sunk here upon the sea, but with the same bold and peremptory aspect which their distant appearance indicated. They seemed to consist of precipitous sheets of naked rock, down which torrents were leaping in a hundred lines of foam. The tops, apparently inaccessible to human foot, were rent and split into the most tremendous pinnacles: towards the base of these bare and precipitous crags the ground, enriched by the soil washed away from them, is verdant and productive.’

The Black Cullin range is rated one of the most challenging in Britain for climbers, with Sgurr Alasdair the highest mountain at 3,255 feet.

Scenic mountain popular with hikers for the breathtaking views of the surrounding countryside seen from its peak.