Ardvasar

Two bars and a Skye-led kitchen

The Inn at Àird a' Bhàsair stands above the shore on a wooded hillside, with two bars to choose between. The MacNaMara is the lounge bar and restaurant; the Bothan is smaller, and its outdoor seats look straight out across the Sound of Sleat. Well-behaved dogs are permitted in both bars.

The kitchen cooks modern Scottish food built around Skye produce. There is a trio of Isle of Skye Smokehouse fish with oatcakes, Drumfearn mussels with bacon, cider, shallots and cream, and a haggis, neeps and tatties potato fritter finished with Tè Bheag whisky sauce. You can order Isle of Skye beer-battered haddock, hake with chorizo, pea, mussel and Parmesan risotto, or a Fearann Eilean Iarmain venison steak. Vegetarians get a beetroot and walnut risotto. Pudding is cranachan or an Irn-Bru cheesecake. The bar pours local ales, island gins and the inn's own Gaelic whiskies. One recent visitor called it "quiet and comfortable, great food, very friendly," and noted that it feels a good way removed from Skye's busier corners.

From change house to community shop

The inn is one of the oldest on the island, built in the early nineteenth century to replace an earlier change house. The whole settlement began as three crofts, allotted to a ferryman, a blacksmith and an innkeeper.

For everything else you head a few minutes north to Armadale Stores, the community-owned shop that also holds the Post Office and the filling station. It carries fresh produce, wholefoods, local beer and spirits, and broad gluten-free and vegan ranges, and there is an eco-refill section for dry goods and cleaning products. Lochalsh Butchers delivers meat twice a week. The shop has won a Sustainability Award for its refill scheme, reduced plastic and electric-vehicle deliveries.

Paths into southern Sleat

Two short core paths run from the village to Margaret's Bridge, a made path of 0.8 kilometres and a track by the chalets of 0.7 kilometres. For something longer, a six-kilometre circuit from the Armadale ferry terminal climbs a couple of hundred metres through estate woodland to a moorland viewpoint, with the Sound of Sleat, Mallaig, Knoydart, Ladhar Bheinn and Beinn Sgritheall laid out below. Further south, from Aird of Sleat, an eight-and-a-half-kilometre there-and-back over rough track and moor reaches the automatic lighthouse at the Point of Sleat, passing a detour to the sands at Camas Daraich. It is a good place to stand and watch for dolphins, gannets and shags, with Eigg, Rum and the Cuillin across the water.

Arrival through the Garden of Skye

You arrive here on a single-track road that runs from the A851 at Armadale, first through dense woodland and then along a rocky shore where a few boats lie moored. Houses climb the hillside behind. This fertile, sheltered fringe of southern Sleat is known as the Garden of Skye. The nearest railway is at Mallaig, reached by the CalMac ferry from Armadale in about three-quarters of an hour.

Macdonald history and ceilidh nights

Immediately north, Armadale Castle stands ruined and fenced off, within forty acres of woodland garden, the old seat of the Macdonalds of Sleat; Flora Macdonald was married here in 1750, and the Museum of the Isles nearby keeps a snuff mull that once belonged to her. On a fine evening, the village hall still runs the occasional ceilidh, as it has since the 1920s.