Clachan (Raasay)

Arrival and Raasay House

Two recumbent stone mermaids lie at the landing jetty. The crossing from Skye takes about twenty-five minutes and lands at Clachan pier, which is the island's front door. There is no public transport on Raasay once you are off the boat, so plan on foot, by bike, or with something arranged in advance.

A short walk uphill brings you to Raasay House, a Category A building owned by the community and doing several jobs at once. Its restaurant and bar cook wild Raasay venison, langoustines from the Sound of Raasay and Skye scallops, with vegetables and herbs from the Walled Garden immediately behind the house. Well-behaved dogs are welcome in the bar, where the same menu is served as in the restaurant. The house also books archery, loch kayaking, bike hire and RIB trips out into the Sound, and these are open to visitors staying elsewhere, not only residents.

Distillery and Island Provisions

The other place to eat is the Isle of Raasay Distillery, at Borodale House. This was the island's first legal distillery, and the whisky is distilled, matured, bottled and shipped without leaving Raasay. The bar has a wooden wraparound counter, indoor tables and lawn benches that look across the water to Skye. Alongside the distillery's own single malt and gin there is beer from Cuillin Brewery, and the kitchen leans on local venison and seafood. Dogs are welcome in the visitor centre.

For provisions, the Raasay Community Stores sit at Inverarish Terrace, fifteen to twenty minutes' walk from the pier. It is a grocery and Post Office in one, and the shelves carry Raasay venison, Dexter beef, honey, whisky and gin alongside the ordinary essentials. Bread comes from Kate, savoury bakes from Katherine, and there are signed books by the resident author Roger Hutchinson, whose work tells the island's own recent history. Katherine's Thyme & Tide Bakes has its own small shop nearby in the old telephone exchange beside the distillery.

The Garden, Chapels and Cross-Slab

The Walled Garden is worth the few minutes it takes to reach it. Free to enter, community-run, with an orchard picnic area and produce sold in season, it grows the fruit and vegetables that reach the Raasay House kitchen and holds an RHS "It's Your Neighbourhood" Level 5 Outstanding rating and Certificate of Distinction.

Two ruined chapels stand near the house. The medieval St Maol-Luag's chapel is a scheduled monument; beside it the roofless memorial chapel of 1839 keeps a Y-tracery east window and a small carved female mask set high in the gable. A little further off, a Pictish cross-slab stands by the road, reportedly turned up when James MacLeod was building the track from the landing place to the house in the early nineteenth century.

Walking Through Raasay's Stories

The walking is the real reason to stay. A waymarked circuit from the pier takes in Churchton Bay, native woodland and the old miners' cottages at Inverarish. For a longer day, Dùn Caan is a flat-topped 443-metre hill with a view of the mainland from the Five Sisters of Kintail to Ruadh Reidh; Boswell is said to have danced a jig on the summit. And a grassy path from North Fearns leads to a memorial overlooking Hallaig, the cleared township that Sorley MacLean, born here in 1911, made the subject of his best-known poem; reaching the ruins themselves means a rough, pathless stretch beyond it. The memorial carries the lines in Gaelic and in his own English.

Hospitality Amid the Winds and Waves

Samuel Johnson, who stayed at the house with Boswell in 1773, called it "such a seat of hospitality amidst the winds and the waves." The winds and the waves are still the first thing you meet at the jetty, past the mermaids.