Torrin

Loch Slapin and Amy’s Place

The pale marble workings appear before the village does. Coming along the single-track B8083 from Broadford, you pass limestone pavement and quarry spoil sitting against the dark bulk of Blà Bheinn, and then Torrin arrives: a scattered crofting settlement strung along the shore of Loch Slapin, with the Red Hills rounded behind it and the far rockier Cuillin skyline off to the west. The road is single-track the whole way, so use the passing places.

The centre of village life is Amy's Place, a small cake shop and tearoom on the B8083 run by Mark and Alison Carter. There are fourteen seats indoors and more outside, facing the loch and the mountain, which is the better option when the weather allows it. Homemade cakes and soup are the heart of it. Depending on the day you might find Cullen skink, a Strathdon blue-cheese toastie, Victoria sponge, carrot cake, or soup with a homemade cheese scone. The tea is Tiree Tea, the coffee Roaring Stag, and the shelves carry Misty Isle Makes crafts and Kitchen Witch soaps alongside the baking.

Amy’s Story and the Mountain Paths

The shop was once the Blue Shed Café. The Carters renamed it for Alison's daughter Amy, who died suddenly in 2018 at twenty-three, having lived with lupus and epilepsy. Purple paint, butterflies and fundraising for Lupus UK run through the place. "So we turned it into Amy's Place so we could talk about her everyday," Mark Carter has said.

Beyond the tearoom, Torrin is a place you come to walk. The Blà Bheinn car park by Loch Slapin is the trailhead for the mountain itself, 928 metres and Skye's only Munro outside the main Cuillin Ridge; the path starts well but turns to loose stone, scree and a little scrambling, and the near-thousand-metre ascent is not a casual outing. The car park has toilets. From the same corner you can take the gentler, boggier route up to Keppoch, a cleared township above the loch where more than fifty families once lived. Forty-four people were evicted in 1852, most emigrating to Australia, and by 1875 nobody remained.

The Cleared Coast, Cill Chriosd and Marble

The longer walk follows the old Marble Line from Cill Chriosd out to Boreraig and Suisnish, two coastal townships cleared in 1853. The path passes quarry ruins, waterfalls and the circular stone remains of a winding wheel from the incline. The geologist Archibald Geikie, who watched the Suisnish families leave, wrote that "a cry of grief went up to heaven."

Cill Chriosd, the ruined parish church east of the village on the B8083, is a long, low rubble rectangle, probably late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, superseded by a new church at Broadford around 1840. Its burial ground holds an armorial stone, a worn cross fragment carved with two animals, and a balustraded Mackinnon enclosure at the east gable. Marble has been quarried near Torrin since at least 1698, when Martin Martin recorded it; it was dressed and polished at Loch Cill Chriosd, and the stone reached Iona Abbey's altar and Armadale Castle, while the small quarry railway ran a locomotive named Skylark.

Elgol and Getting Here

Elgol lies nine miles on, where boats leave for Loch Coruisk. Service 55 threads the B8083 from Kyle of Lochalsh through Broadford and Torrin, though it runs seldom enough that you should check your date. You can arrive by car, order soup and sit outside watching the light move across Blà Bheinn.