Duntulm

The Castle at the Edge

The castle sits on a basalt promontory at the north tip of Trotternish, cliff-bound on three sides and about fifty feet above the sea. What is left of it is fragmentary: a courtyard stronghold built in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, added to over the years, and now fenced off. The signs ask you not to go beyond the fence line, and they mean it. The ruin is structurally unstable and has been losing masonry to the water below for a long time. You come for the headland and the view, not the walls.

Getting to that view is easy. The path from the A855 is a grassy out-and-back of about a kilometre, fifteen metres of ascent, half an hour there and back. The walk suits families, provided everyone understands that it ends at the viewpoint and not inside the ruin. Below you is Tulm Bay and the low green hump of Tulm Island; beyond that the Little Minch, and on a clear day the hills of Harris across the water.

Food Stops and the Long Coast Walk

Duntulm is a scattered crofting township on exposed ground where wet moor meets cliff, and its amenities are spread along the coast road. A nearby meal option is the Flodigarry Hotel, at the foot of the Quiraing, where the kitchen under Miles Craven works with what the estate and shore provide. The sample dinner runs to hand-dived Skye scallops from Ben Oakes, smoked venison, an Atlantic cod steak, a Hebridean pork and Stornoway black-pudding Scotch pie, and a Talisker whisky and chocolate crémeux. Kilmuir lamb and Highland beef turn up too. Nearer, at Kilmaluag, Bûrr is a roadside coffee cabin with a few outdoor seats, speciality coffee and sweet bakes, looking out over croftland to the sea.

For a longer day, the Rubha Hunish circuit starts from the Shulista road near Kilmaluag: 8.5 kilometres, 340 metres of ascent, three to five hours. The made path turns boggy in places, and the optional drop to the headland itself is a steep rocky scramble. You pass the abandoned settlement of Erisco and a former coastguard lookout, now a bothy, that once watched this shipping channel, before reaching basalt cliffs, sea stacks and a natural arch. Shags, razorbills and gannets are recorded here, and otter, porpoise, dolphin and even whale are possible. The route includes views back to Duntulm Castle.

Jurassic Footprints

The older story here is much older. At Cairidh Ghlumaig the coast preserves layers of sauropod tracks in the Middle Jurassic Duntulm Formation, reported as Scotland's most extensive dinosaur site at the time. Staffin, down the road, has the island's only dinosaur museum, founded by the crofter Dugald Ross in 1976, where you can get help finding footprints in the rock.

Legend and Record

The castle's own legends are grim and best taken as legend: a chief imprisoned with salted meat until he died of thirst, a baby dropped from a window. What the record supports is plainer. The MacDonalds of Sleat left Duntulm for Monkstadt around 1732, and the castle provided material for rebuilding Monkstadt House.

Island Life at Kilmuir

Nearby at Kilmuir, the Skye Museum of Island Life keeps eight thatched cottages, one of them lived in until 1957. A croft family there once declined to meet the visiting Duke and Duchess of York. Their son explained it simply: if his parents went to London, he did not think the Royals would come out to meet them.