Edinbane

Kilns at the loch head

Edinbane Pottery stands in wooded grounds at the head of Loch Greshornish, where craftspeople work wood-fired and salt-glazed stoneware you can watch being made before you buy it. Stuart founded it with his father in 1971, after finding boulder clay as a child on the island of Pabay, and built his kilns here in the early 1980s. Julie McWhirter joined in 1998, Andreas Müller in 2006, and Stuart and Julie's son Chris came in later as an apprentice. The ranges carry names like Blue Waves, Sea Salt, and Ebb and Flow.

The village sits just off the A850, looped around the loch head with the Abhainn Choishleadar running through it, fourteen miles from Portree and eight from Dunvegan. Its Gaelic name, An t-Aodann Bàn, means "pale hill face." This is planned-village geography: an inn, a mill and a school laid out together in the nineteenth century.

Two ways to dine

The Edinbane Inn began as a farmhouse and has kept the character of one, with a stove and an open fire in the bar. The kitchen is more ambitious than the setting suggests. You might find Skye black-pudding fritters in Guinness-and-port batter, scallops with pea purée and chorizo, Balmoral chicken stuffed with haggis, beer-battered haddock and chips, or a beetroot risotto, finishing with sticky-toffee pudding with whisky or Scottish cheeses with oatcakes and quince. Pat Riddell, editor of National Geographic Traveller, called a meal here in 2021 "the best food I had anywhere in the UK." Small, well-behaved dogs are welcome in the bar dining areas, though not the restaurant, and there is a garden. Live music and traditional sessions run in the bar.

A short way off, Edinbane Lodge does something different. Calum Montgomery, who was born on Skye, runs a fine-dining restaurant with rooms in a restored sixteenth-century hunting lodge, cooking a tasting menu that changes every four to six weeks around what island crofters, growers and fishermen bring in. It took four AA Rosettes in 2022 and Restaurant of the Year at the 2023 Scottish Excellence Awards. The lodge also has a place in the village's history: Sir Edmund Hilleary installed hydro power behind it in 1927 and shared the current with the local hospital, which is how Gesto got an X-ray machine.

Planning supplies and connections

The village shop closed in 2008 and has not reopened, though the community company that owns it still hopes to. For a full grocery shop, Portree or Dunvegan are the nearest options; the Stagecoach 56 stops at the primary school and runs to both, which matters because there is no railway anywhere on Skye and Kyle of Lochalsh, the mainland railhead, sits a long way east.

The Gesto Hospital story

The hospital became one of the village's defining institutions. Kenneth MacLeod, born in 1809, made his money as an indigo planter in India, came home, bought up Greshornish, Orbost, Edinbane and Skeabost, and founded the village with its inn, mill and school. He died in 1869 leaving money "for the benefit of his Countrymen the people of Skye," and the twelve-bed Gesto Hospital opened in 1878 as the first on the island. It closed in 2007 and is now holiday accommodation.

Old roads and a half-day castle

For a walk, Karen's Track runs 2.4 kilometres along a renovated stretch of Thomas Telford's old road, from Clachamish to the Fanks road end, laid out as a memorial to Karen Nicolson, a local Olympian. Dunvegan Castle and its gardens are eight miles on, worth a half-day rather than a quick photograph. Back at the loch head, the kiln is wood-fired, as it always has been.