Ord

The road, bay and low-tide shore

The road to Ord runs out at a sandy bay. It comes down through wooded Glen Ord beside the river, single-track with passing places, and arrives at a broad crescent of sand fringed with rock pools and jagged rock. Straight across Loch Eishort stands the whole of the Black Cuillin, Blà Bheinn at the end of the ridge, and in the evening the sun sets behind the mountains. There is a tiny tidal island offshore. The name is Gaelic for rounded hill.

What Ord has is that view. The shore is the main focus of a visit. A track heads north past the white walls of An-Acarsaid's garden to a run of small, remote beaches made of crushed coral and broken shell. The bay itself has a short geological walk along its section, about a kilometre and an hour, though you need low tide for the rock to be exposed at all; the same is true of the longer coastal circuit north of the village.

The Ord Loop and Dùn Scaith

The single-track road does not stop at Ord. It carries on around the west coast through Tokavaig and Tarskavaig before turning back east, a route known as the Ord Loop. At Tokavaig a short walk out over rough grass and boggy ground, a couple of kilometres there and back, brings you to Dùn Scaith, a thirteenth-century shore ruin with the pivot holes for its drawbridge still cut into the rock and a well in the courtyard. It was a MacLeod stronghold before it became the MacDonalds' principal seat on Skye. Across the water you can pick out the cleared townships of Boreraig and Suisnish. Tradition puts the warrior queen Sgathaich here, teaching Cù Chulainn the arts of war.

Food across Sleat

For food you go back out to the A851. An Crùbh, at Duisdale, is a community-built café, general store and post office in one, with an inglenook fire, local vegetables and seafood, and mountain views from the tables. Further south at Eilean Iarmain, the bar at the hotel has served Cullen skink, Loch Eishort mussels, langoustines landed at the old stone pier, and an estate venison burger, with food carried out to the shorefront lawn when the weather allows. The hotel centres Gaelic language and culture, and hosts regular live traditional music. One of Màiri Mhòr nan Òran's lines is printed on the menu: "When I reached Eilean Iarmain the furrows left my brow." Torabhaig, the distillery at Teangue, has a café and runs tours from around forty-five minutes to two hours.

Ferries and the A851

Skye has no railway; you come off the Mallaig ferry at Armadale, which needs booking ahead, then follow the A851 for ten miles from Broadford and turn onto four and a half miles of minor road.

Ord House and the Ord Palm

Ord House, said to have been built around 1750 and rebuilt in 1810, sits above the bay; Ord was a setting for the poet Alexander Smith's A Summer in Skye. In its walled garden grows the Ord Palm, a cabbage tree raised, the story goes, from seed sent home by a tenant the family had helped emigrate to Australia.