Kisimul Castle sits on its own rock about a hundred yards off the ferry pier, an eleven-metre granite tower that predates most of the village looking at it. It was probably built in the late fifteenth century, first written down by Dean Monro in 1549, and after it was abandoned in 1838 its stones were carted away as ship's ballast and some of them ended up as Glasgow paving. Robert Lister MacNeil, an American architect and the clan's 45th chief, bought back the ruins in 1937 and began putting them together again. The castle has been closed to visitors since the pandemic, with conservation work restarted in late 2025, so for now you watch it from the harbour rather than the boat.
The harbour is the whole point of Castlebay — the Gaelic name, Bàgh a' Chaisteil, means bay of the castle. Houses step up the slope around a horseshoe of water, with Heaval rising 383 metres directly behind. This is where most of Barra's shops are: grocery stores, a bank, the post office, a petrol station and a supermarket that opened in 2009, plus the island's medical centre and police station.
Two hotels face the water. The Castlebay Hotel, said to have opened in 1894, has a bar and restaurant next to the ferry terminal and does fresh Scottish seafood — one guest reported "the biggest hand dived scallops we have ever seen," and the steak pie gets a mention for what it does to you after a day on the hill. Many of its plates and serving dishes are thrown in the hotel's own pottery studio. The Craigard Hotel is the second, longer-established option.
For dinner the surprise is Café Kisimul on Main Street, which has been cooking authentic Punjabi food alongside local Hebridean ingredients since 2004, under a rock and roll theme, on an island at the far western edge of Scotland. Isle of Barra Distillers, billing itself as Scotland's most westerly distillery, makes gin, rum and vodka branded with hand-foraged carrageen seaweed and has won gold medals abroad, and the Hebridean Toffee Company makes the toffee.
The climb up Heaval is the walk to do, rewarded with views over the bay, the castle, Vatersay and the southern isles. Partway up stands Our Lady of the Sea, a white Carrara-marble Madonna and Child put there in 1954. A causeway runs south to Vatersay and its twin white-sand beaches, and the single-track ring road circles the rest of the island.
Getting here is half the character. The CalMac ferry crosses to Oban, as it has since three steamers a week ran the route in 1894, and the little plane to Barra Airport lands on the cockle sands at Tràigh Mhòr, timed to low tide because at high tide the runway is under the sea.
Compton Mackenzie set Whisky Galore! here and is buried at the north end of the island. The herring boom that once packed four hundred boats into this bay is long gone, and Heaval keeps its statue looking out over the water either way.