Orbost

Black sand and the house above

The track down from Orbost Farm ends at a beach of black sand, with Harlosh Island offshore and the Cuillin ridged along the horizon across the bay. There are no toilets or lifeguard; you walk in. Orbost is a scattered estate settlement in Duirinish, spread above the southern shore of Loch Bharcasaig, with the flat-topped hills known as MacLeod's Tables standing behind the house and the water opening out in front.

The house is the centre of it. Orbost House is an early-nineteenth-century classical building grafted onto an older dwelling, with a façade of Soay stone, a Roman Doric doorpiece, plaster ceilings and a curved stair. Two doors in the older part still carry dates scratched into them, 1764 and 1765. It began as a thatched tacksman's house built for Dr Samuel Campbell, was enlarged and turned to face a new direction around 1835 to 1840, and then worked its way through a run of jobs: a home for alcoholics from about 1890, a shooting lodge and hotel in the 1930s, a family home after the war. David and Marion Roberts restored it between 1975 and 1985.

Writers, walkers and the Maidens

The writer Otta Swire came back to live here in 1946 and wrote *Skye: The Island and Its Legends* in the house, setting down stories she had first heard as a child on holiday with her grandparents. An earlier visitor, Alexander Smith, wandered the grounds and decided, "I should rather live at Orbost than at any other house in Skye."

Most people come to walk. The path to MacLeod's Maidens starts at the house and runs seventeen kilometres there and back, five to six hours over 589 metres of ascent. It skirts Loch Bharcasaig with the Cuillin in view, crosses the Forse Burn and passes through Rebel's Wood, a stand of native birches planted as a carbon-offset scheme and dedicated to Joe Strummer of the Clash. Further on it reaches the ruins of Brandarsaig and the cleared village of Idrigill, emptied by 1877, and finally the cliffs above three sea stacks: the Mother and her two Daughters. The largest was first climbed in 1959. The path is good for most of the way and disappears near the stacks, and the view comes from an exposed cliff edge.

The Ramasaig coast

The longer coastal walk from Ramasaig finishes at Orbost, fourteen miles and up to ten hours of firm cliff-top turf broken by bog and stream crossings. Neither end has a bus, so it takes planning.

Dinner back towards Dunvegan

Orbost itself has no pub, shop or church. For dinner you drive back towards Dunvegan, where The Dunvegan cooks Skye seafood and Highland meat over an Asado grill and a wood oven, from crispy Loch Beag oysters to sticky toffee pudding, and its daytime deli does Scotch pancakes and porridge. The Old School Restaurant occupies the former Duirinish schoolhouse and serves langoustines, mussels and steak by two open fires. The Three Chimneys is a short way on at Colbost.

The road to Orbost

Getting here means a minor road off the B884 west of Dunvegan; the nearest railhead is Kyle of Lochalsh, and the bus stops several kilometres short. At Idrigill, a market grower now raises salad leaves under polytunnels.