Raasay's remote north end
Brochel (Raasay)
A fenced rock-pinnacle castle, a hand-built road and long views across the Inner Sound frame a visit built around walking rather than facilities.
- Best for
- Castle history and north-end walking
- Give it
- Up to a full day with the ferry and road journey
- Don't miss
- The castle from safely outside its fence
The Fox verdict
Come for the road-end landscape, not village facilities
Brochel is a sparse north-Raasay settlement where the castle, Calum's Road and two substantial walks supply the reasons to visit.
The reward is a layered landscape: a MacLeod stronghold engineered around a rock pinnacle, the road Calum MacLeod built north to Arnish, and routes towards cleared Screapadal and Fladda. The settlement itself has no visitor services, so food, shopping and other facilities belong to the return journey south.
Where to go
Places in Brochel (Raasay)
Every place below is checked against a published source, listed with what it is and how long to give it.
Local signatures
3 placesSt Maol-luag's Chapel
A roofless early-13th-century former parish church with a round-arched splayed east window and a late-medieval arched tomb recess.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 30 minutes
- Locality
- Clachan
Raasay House Hotel bar and restaurant
A family-run hotel bar, cafe and restaurant whose kitchen identifies Raasay venison, Sound of Raasay langoustines, Skye scallops and produce from the walled garden as core local ingredients.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 1.5 hours
- Locality
- At Clachan
- Access
- Evening dining is open to non-residents, but advance booking is described as essential in summer. Diners with dogs are seated in the bar, where the restaurant menu is also served.
Isle of Raasay Distillery
Raasay's first legal distillery, producing whisky and gin since 2017 and offering guided production tours, tastings, a restaurant and a tasting bar.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 1 hour 15 minutes
- Locality
- Near the ferry
- Access
- Dogs are accepted in the visitor centre and bar; only guide dogs may enter the production facility.
Food & drink
1 placeRaasay Community Stores
A community-owned grocery shop and Post Office stocking named island produce including Raasay venison, Dexter beef, honey, whisky, gin and bread and baking from island bakers.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 20 minutes
- Locality
- Inverarish
Walks & outdoors
1 placeScreapadal walk
A 5.5-kilometre walk descending on clear tracks past crofthouse remains and a ravine to the cleared township, with Applecross views across the Inner Sound.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow 1.5–2 hours
- Locality
- Starting just before Brochel
- Access
- The optional return path towards Brochel Castle is boggy, indistinct and unwaymarked.
History & heritage
2 placesBrochel Castle
A probably 15th–16th-century MacLeod stronghold built around two levels of a roughly 15-metre rock stack, with recorded remains including a rock-cut sentry box, courtyard and tower foundations.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 30 minutes
- Locality
- Immediately beside the settlement and road
- Access
- View only from outside the fence: the ruin is precarious and signs prohibit entry.
Calum's Road
The narrow, winding road Calum MacLeod built north after residents' requests for a motor road were refused; it links Brochel with Arnish and has 20 passing places.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 45 minutes
- Locality
- From Brochel to Arnish
Things to do
1 placeRaasay Walled Garden
A community-owned restored garden with an honesty stall for seasonal vegetables, herbs and flowers, orchard picnic tables, allotments and Victorian glasshouse remains.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 45 minutes
- Locality
- Behind Raasay House
- Access
- Free to enter, with grass paths and toilets; dogs are welcome on leads.
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Three ways to explore Brochel (Raasay)
Signature outings
Trace a castle built to its pinnacle
From outside the safety fence, follow how Brochel Castle's sentry box, courtyard and towers were fitted around two levels of the rock stack.
Descend to cleared Screapadal
Follow clear tracks past crofthouse remains and a ravine to the township later remembered in Sorley MacLean's poem “Screapadal.”
Picnic beside the community garden
Use the orchard picnic tables, then see the growing beds, allotments, honesty stall and remains of the Victorian glasshouse.
The village story
Brochel: castle, road and north-end walks
The source-locked guide follows Brochel Castle, Calum's hand-built road, Screapadal and Calum's Path, with food and supplies farther south on Raasay.
Castle stone and Calum's Road
Brochel Castle stands on a conglomerate stack about fifteen metres above the shore, its walls built into two levels of the rock: a sentry box cut from the stone, a courtyard, a kitchen and stair tower, and the foundations of a three-storey tower, all following the pinnacle rather than levelling it. It was probably raised in the fifteenth or sixteenth century by Calum Garbh, youngest son of the ninth MacLeod chief of Lewis, and it remained the chief residence of the Raasay MacLeods until the seventeenth. James Boswell, who came in 1773, noted "an opening in the wall from which hot water or stones could be thrown upon an invader." You see it now from outside the fence; the ruin is dangerous and entry is prohibited.
This is the north end of Raasay, seven miles up a single-track road from the ferry. For a long time the public road stopped here. What continues is Calum's Road: nearly two miles of narrow, winding tarmac with twenty passing places, built by hand by Calum MacLeod after the council refused residents' requests for a motor road. It ran from Brochel to Arnish, where he lived with Lexie MacLeod, and Inverness County Council surveyed, adopted and tarmacked it in 1982.
Pack first, then walk to Screapadal
Brochel itself has no shop and no petrol, and facilities generally are limited. Arrive fuelled — there is no filling station anywhere on Raasay — and bring a packed lunch.
The walking is the reason to come. Screapadal begins just before Brochel: three and a half miles on clear tracks that drop past crofthouse remains and a ravine to a cleared township, with the Applecross hills across the Inner Sound. It was one of fourteen Raasay townships emptied after George Rainy bought the estate in 1843, and the Raasay-born poet Sorley MacLean made the abandoned settlement the subject of his poem "Screapadal." The optional return towards the castle is boggy and unmarked; the there-and-back is the safer line.
Arnish paths and food farther south
From the road's end at Arnish, Calum's Path runs another three and a half miles through native birchwood, past a lochan and outcrops of Lewisian gneiss, with Skye in view. A tidal causeway leads to the island of Fladda, slippery and passable only at low tide. No bus reaches either start, and no public transport reaches this part of the island at all.
For food you drive south. Raasay House at Clachan uses local produce including wild Raasay venison, langoustines from the Sound of Raasay, Skye scallops and vegetables from its own walled garden; dogs are allowed in the bar, where the restaurant menu is also served, and in summer evening booking is essential. Near the ferry, the Isle of Raasay Distillery — the island's first legal distillery, making whisky and gin since 2017 — has a restaurant and tasting bar looking west to the Cuillin. The community-owned stores at Inverarish keep Raasay venison, Dexter beef, honey and bread from island bakers, alongside a Post Office. The restored walled garden behind Raasay House has an honesty stall for seasonal veg, picnic tables in the orchard and toilets.
Ferry arrival and Brochel's scattered remains
Getting here means the CalMac ferry from Sconser on Skye, a twenty-five-minute turn-up-and-go crossing; the nearest railhead is Kyle of Lochalsh, then road to Sconser.
Back at Brochel the settlement is mostly grazing ground and scattered stone: croft structures, a clearance cairn, and a modernised house thought once to have been the school. There are no on-site visitor facilities. You bring your lunch, walk, and drive back down for supper.
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A guide with a point of view
Written from research. Edited for real journeys.
Use the Official site links for live practical details, then use this guide for context, ideas and room to explore.
Sources
Every place on this page is checked against a published source. Each entry links the record we used and names who publishes it.
- Brochel Castle — portal.historicenvironment.scot statutory register or public authority
- Screapadal walk — walkhighlands.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Calum's Road — raasay.com other published source
- St Maol-luag's Chapel — portal.historicenvironment.scot statutory register or public authority
- Raasay Walled Garden — raasay.com operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Raasay House Hotel bar and restaurant — raasay-house.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Isle of Raasay Distillery — raasaydistillery.com operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Raasay Community Stores — raasay.com operator, sector body or destination organisation