Ullinish

The falling tide to Oronsay

The minor road into Ullinish ends near a two-storey farmhouse and a shoreline where a stone causeway comes and goes with the tide. Cross at the wrong hour and you are stranded: the stones sit under water for roughly two to three hours either side of high tide, and the safe crossing is on a falling tide, checked against a table before you set out. On the far side is Oronsay, a green island of dry turf, cliffs and sea stacks, with a deep natural arch on its lower southern coast and Tarner Island's own arch offshore. The round trip is about three miles and a little over two hours, with boggy pasture at the start and 155 metres of climbing. Walkhighlands calls it "one of the best shorter walks on Skye."

The farmhouse is Ullinish House, built in 1757 for Alexander MacLeod. James Boswell and Samuel Johnson arrived here on 21 September 1773; Boswell described MacLeod as the island's sheriff-substitute. From the shore the following morning Boswell watched an emigrant ship, the Margaret of Clyde, pass on its way out of the Hebrides, and called it "a melancholy sight." The house now takes guests and serves a continental breakfast, but no lunch or evening meals, so plan the rest of your food elsewhere.

Food and supplies beyond the township

Struan, up the road, has the only shop in the area, with the post office inside it — the place to draw cash or send a parcel. Struan also has Bog Myrtle Skye, a café and bakery whose renovation was filmed for BBC Two's Designing the Hebrides. At Ose, on the main road, the Old Byre pairs a small family-run gallery with a café.

For a proper pub you drive to the far side of Loch Harport. The Old Inn at Carbost sits on the water with trestle tables outside, three changing cask ales usually including Cuillin and Isle of Skye beers, live music most weekends and seafood landed from the loch. Well-behaved quiet dogs are welcome. At Portnalong, the Taigh Ailean Hotel — the name means Alan's House — runs a lounge bar and restaurant with fresh oysters, scallops and langoustines alongside fish and chips, steak-and-ale pie, venison casserole and Cullen skink. They keep towels behind the bar for drying wet dogs.

Getting here and older Ullinish

Getting here means a car. The nearest railway is at Kyle of Lochalsh on the mainland; from there it is the bridge and a run of single-track road off the A863. No bus service currently reaches the township, so check Traveline before planning around one.

Boswell and Johnson were taken to see an underground chamber that had come to light when someone dug after a fox. It is still there, a stone passage about four metres long, now read as an Iron Age store for perishable food, built somewhere between 500 BC and AD 500. Boswell also noted the "hill of strife" beside the house, once a place where justice was administered, which struck him as fitting given the sheriff lived below it.

Brochs, whisky and Dunvegan Castle

Just off the A863 near Bracadale stands Dun Beag, one of Skye's best-preserved brochs, free to visit, with a narrow entrance and twenty steps of its internal stair still climbable up a steep sheep field. Talisker, the island's oldest working distillery, founded by the MacAskill brothers in 1830, is at Carbost, and Dunvegan Castle and its gardens are about twenty minutes by car.

Carved stones at Bracadale

At Bracadale, the old graveyard holds slabs carved with claymores and foliage, and one with a warrior in high relief, above turf-covered foundations thought to be those of an earlier chapel.