Portnahaven

Seals in the Sheltered Inlet

Grey seals haul themselves out onto the rocks in the middle of the inlet, a few yards from the harbour front, and lie there looking entirely unbothered by the people watching them. Portnahaven Bay is reckoned the easiest place on Islay to see seals at close quarters, and you don't have to go anywhere to do it. You stand by the water and they are there, on the rocks between the whitewashed cottages, with the lighthouse on Orsay island out across the sea.

The cottages wrap in a terrace around a small, steep, sheltered inlet at the south-western tip of the Rinns of Islay, with a patch of sand at the bottom of it. This is where the A847 ends. Below Portnahaven, joined to it along the shore, is Port Wemyss, built in 1832 a short distance to the south.

The Singing House and the Road North

The pub is An Tigh Seinnse on the harbour front, which from the outside looks like a private cottage and inside is a marine bar with an open fire. The Gaelic name means something close to "the singing house," and one Tripadvisor review headline — "The Singing Seals at the Singing House" — collapses the whole village into a headline. The menu is home-cooked Scottish, heavy on seafood: lobster straight from the water outside, Cullen skink, fish and chips, with the back bar given over to Islay single malts. There are very few tables, so booking is sensible. One reviewer called it "worth the trip to Portnahaven just for the pub alone." Its trading status has been reported as uncertain, so it is worth a phone call before you set your heart on the lobster.

The village has one shop, which is also the post office. There is a pottery. For anything more you drive the seven miles up the single-track road to Port Charlotte, about twenty minutes, which has the Museum of Islay Life and a wider choice of places to eat.

Two Doors and a Fisherman's Path

The church is the thing people remember. Built in 1828 to a Thomas Telford design — one of the Parliamentary Kirks, and one of the very few to keep the plan unaltered — it has two front doors. Local tradition holds that one was for the people of Portnahaven and the other for the people of Port Wemyss, which has never had its own church. Inside are the original box pews and a central pulpit. On Wednesday mornings it serves coffee and cake under the name "T in the Church."

The best short walk is the circuit through both villages, about 1.7 miles, joining the Fisherman's Path along the sea at Port Wemyss — "a delightful short path which is maintained by the locals" — and coming back through the harbour. Along the way there are otters and, if you are lucky, dolphins. Out at Frenchmen's Rocks, on the south-western point, seabirds gather in numbers in the autumn.

A Village Built for Fishing

Portnahaven was founded in 1788 for people cleared from the interior of the island, given fishing and crofting in place of what they had lost. The fish stocks that paid for it are long gone. The seals stayed.