The Stein Inn keeps more than 120 Scottish whiskies behind a bar with a snug and two log burners, and it has been serving since 1790, which makes it the oldest inn on Skye. Its five bedrooms face the sea. Charlie owns it and works both front of house and in the kitchen, with her daughter Clémence helping through the holidays. Dogs and children are welcome, and the garden looks west across Loch Bay towards the Outer Hebrides and the sunset.
The kitchen leans on what comes out of the water. There is fish chowder, a platter of Skye-smoked salmon, herring, mackerel and mussels, haggis and Skye black-pudding bonbons, beer-battered haddock, a venison haunch steak, pan-fried monkfish and whole sea bass, with Loch Bay lobster, crab and langoustines when the weather lets the boats out. Nigella Lawson called the local seafood "incredibly fresh and beautiful local ingredients, cooked simply and perfectly." Three real ales usually feature, often from the Isle of Skye, Swannay and Cairngorm breweries, and the inn has been in the Good Beer Guide since 2000.
A few doors along Macleods Terrace, in a cottage of about the same age, is Loch Bay, a six-table restaurant with a Michelin star run by Michael and Laurence Smith. Michael's Skye Fruits de Mer is built from hand-dived scallops, creel-caught langoustines and rope-grown mussels, and the menu also runs to bouillabaisse: French technique on Highland ingredients. The supply chain is short, and lobster can arrive through the kitchen window from the jetty. Michelin's inspectors noted "a snug, intimate feel."
For something to carry away, Donnie's Tablet Shed sells homemade Scottish tablet on a self-service basis, in flavours that include Isle of Skye sea salt, stem ginger, Drambuie, Talisker and white chocolate with cardamom. Nearby at Lochbay, Skyeskyns is a working sheepskin tannery, the last commercial one in Scotland, with a showroom and, in season, a café serving coffee, bakes and soup. The drop-in tanning tours are free, though dogs stay outside the tannery and showroom.
The village itself is small: a skewed row of whitewashed, rubble-built houses strung along the loch, a beach, a jetty and open croft land rising behind. This is the remains of an ambitious plan. In the late 1700s the British Fisheries Society hired Thomas Telford to design planned fishing villages, Stein among them alongside Ullapool and Pulteneytown, to profit from the herring boom. Telford's 1790 survey recommended building the inn first. Twelve two-storey houses went up in 1796; the built settlement was much smaller than the plan. The grandest of the row, the Captain's House, had to be rebuilt after its gable collapsed in 1955.
The walking here is gentler than the Cuillin, with relatively flat walk ideas along the loch and out towards Trumpan, Gillen and the Sgorr cliffs. This is crofting land, so gates get closed and dogs go on leads. The longer outing follows the coast to Waternish Point, about eight and a half miles there and back from Trumpan Church, boggy in places and worth it for the sea watching; whales and dolphins are seen from the headland.
Trumpan Church stands roofless above the coast, a rubble ruin with a rough arched doorway in its north wall and a broken stone basin inside that probably served as a font. In 1578 MacDonalds from Uist set fire to it while MacLeods were at worship, and the fight that followed is remembered as the Battle of the Spoiling Dyke.
The Portree–Glendale bus does not reach up to Stein, so arriving by car is the practical option, turning off the A850 onto the B886; the nearest railhead is Kyle of Lochalsh, then over the Skye Bridge. Dunvegan Castle and the pale coral beaches at Claigan lie nearby. By evening, though, the smaller thing stays with you: the light going gold over the Minch, the white fronts of the houses catching it, and Jack down at the loch skimming stones.