Clachan Seil

The House of the Trousers

The Tigh an Truish sits by the bridge, and its name means "House of the Trousers." After the 1746 Dress Act banned Highland dress, islanders felt safe enough wearing kilts on Seil but changed into trousers at the inn before crossing to the mainland, then changed back on the way home. Forgotten trousers accumulated. That is how the pub got its name.

It has been an inn for more than 250 years, and it is still the reason most people stop here. The interior is rustic wood, an L-shaped counter, and a high bench seat called the Perch. A door by the bar leads through to a modern dining room with two AA rosettes, a head chef, William Rocks, whose restaurant has featured on MasterChef: The Professionals, and a menu built on local seafood, venison, beef and lamb. Reviewers name the whitebait, the scallops, and the fish and chips. Two handpumps serve Scottish ales — Fyne Ales' Avalanche and Jarl among them — though one goes quiet in winter. The garden and patio are the place to be in summer.

Bridge and Island Settlements

The bridge outside is the other thing everyone comes for. It is a single high-arched hump of masonry across the Clachan Sound, built in 1792 to carry what is now the B844, and it has been called the Bridge over the Atlantic ever since. The sound is narrow — barely 70 feet across at points — but it is open water, so the name is technically correct. Fairy foxglove colonises the south wall and flowers over it in early summer. An artist called C. John Taylor, who lived at Ellenabeich until 1998, painted it; the print sold nearly a million copies.

Once you are across, the island opens up. Balvicar is the main village, central, with the harbour, the golf club, and Balvicar Stores — the only shop on Seil, small but with a range that runs deeper than it looks. Ellenabeich, on the west coast, is a row of whitewashed cottages that were once quarry housing. An Cala garden is there, two sheltered hectares of waterfalls, azaleas and cherry trees with a view to Mull, made in the 1930s on 2,800 tons of imported topsoil.

Slate and Island Walking

The whole place was built on slate. At its peak in the 1860s the quarries cut nine million slates a year and roofed cities across the Empire — you can still find Easdale slate on roofs in Melbourne, Dunedin and Dublin. A storm in November 1881 breached the sea walls and flooded the pits, and the industry never really recovered. The drowned quarries are still there, water-filled and full of wildlife.

Walking is the point of a stay. There is a short sharp climb behind Ellenabeich to a viewpoint over the Sound of Luing, a coast-and-moor loop from Cuan, and an easier circuit from Balvicar. Foot ferries run from Ellenabeich to Easdale, which hosts the World Stone Skimming Championships every September, in a flooded quarry, using local slate no wider than three inches.

Connections to Oban

Oban and its trains are eleven miles back up the road. The 418 bus calls at the village roughly every three hours. Frances Shand Kydd, Diana's mother, lived on the island for many years, until her death in 2004.