The tables outside Arisaig Marine's café sit at the edge of the harbour, close enough to the water that you can reach them on foot or arrive by boat. They look out over Loch nan Ceall, the coffee is Fairtrade and organic, and the gift shop behind sells Harris Tweed, Ardnamurchan candles and soap from Shetland. This is the western end of the Road to the Isles, where the village's mostly white-painted houses run between the harbour and the road up to Morar, and the coast turns to rock, blue water and white sand with Rum and Eigg out to sea.
From the same harbour the MV Sheerwater sails to the Small Isles between mid-April and the end of August — Eigg and Muck on the scheduled runs, Rum added through the summer. Seals, dolphins, whales and seabirds turn up on the way, though nobody promises them.
For a proper sit-down, the Crofter's Rest at the Arisaig Hotel is the village pub. The kitchen leans on local seafood — the hotel smokes its own salmon and mussels — and pours real ales, Scottish gins and a long list of single malts. Dogs are welcome on leads in the bar and restaurant, and children until ten in the evening if supervised.
A short walk on, the Old Library Lodge occupies a converted stone stable two centuries old, cooking modern Scottish with a French turn. The menu changes with the catch, but has run to Cullen skink, oak-smoked salmon, mussels from Loch nan Uamh in garlic, onion and white wine, battered monkfish tail with curry mayonnaise, and wild-venison pavé with port and redcurrant.
For lighter days there is Sound Bites, a family-run café done out around a retro music theme, with homemade cakes, milkshakes, toasties, chilli-loaded chips and apple crumble under toffee ice cream.
The Land, Sea & Islands Centre stands in a converted smiddy and belongs to the community. Its displays cover crofting, fishing and knitting, and its shop sells Scottish books and local crafts to fund the trust's work. The workshop is called Bill's Shed, after Bill Henderson, who helped set up both the Community Council and the Community Trust.
The centre also keeps the village's stranger history. During the war the estates around Arisaig were used as a Special Operations Executive training ground, and among those who learned their trade here were Czech and Slovak agents, in the field between 1941 and 1943. A granite memorial by the sculptor Josef Vajce, shaped as a fallen parachute, was unveiled in November 2009; Colonel Jaroslav Klemeš, who had trained here himself, read the remembrance, and the village followed it with a reception and a ceilidh.
The oldest building is easy to miss: a roofless chapel dedicated to St Maelrubha, its walls probably no later than the sixteenth century and possibly earlier. The church that Clanranald built in 1810 as a Catholic chapel now belongs to the Church of Scotland, while William Burn's taller St Mary, from 1849, carries a three-storey tower and an east window whose stained glass depicts the Dowager Marchioness of Bute, who largely financed the church's 1900 renovation.
The walking starts at the door. The Strath of Arisaig circuit is a gentle four and a half kilometres on farm tracks, passing a timber-floating channel still called The Canal and dropping back through oakwoods with the bay ahead. North of the village the white beaches continue at Camusdarach and the Silver Sands of Morar; inland, the Glenfinnan Viaduct carries the West Highland railway. Arisaig has its own station on that line, the A830 runs through on its way from Fort William to Mallaig, and Shiel Buses stop by the shop.
Down the road is Astley Hall, a weatherboarded village hall that Philip Webb designed in 1893 — one of only two buildings he built in Scotland. Inside, a plaque records that Miss C. C. Astley put it up "for the people of Arisaig & District."