Eilean Donan stands on a small island where Loch Long meets the sea, reached by a three-arched stone bridge and causeway, and it dominates the view from much of the village. The castle you look at is largely a reconstruction, raised around surviving medieval walls. In 1719 Spanish troops holding it for the Jacobites were bombarded for three days by three government frigates, and when the defenders surrendered the victors packed 343 barrels of gunpowder into the walls and blew the place apart. The ruins sat abandoned for nearly two centuries until John MacRae-Gilstrap bought the island in 1911; the twenty-year rebuild, run by architect George Mackie Watson and local clerk of works Farquhar MacRae, finished in 1932. An earlier keeper, the seventeenth-century constable Reverend Mr Farquhar, was recorded as "well pleased to be rid of the island, because it was a bad habitation for a man of his age and corpulence."
Dornie itself is a low line of two-storey slated houses along the water. An 1880 survey found them "in good repair." It began as something planned: the Earl of Seaforth laid it out as a fishing and trading station, David Urquhart drew up the plans in 1794, and the economy was meant to run on Loch Duich herring and black cattle. By 1812 four or five hundred people lived here, and sailing ships of up to 200 tons were built on the shore before the fishing declined.
The Dornie Hotel, on Francis Street, keeps a bar and restaurant going with locally caught seafood, a real fire and a beer garden. Dishes here have included fish chowder, venison loin and a chicken-and-leek pie. Dogs are welcome in the bar, though not the dining room.
For something quicker, Heilan Scran near the castle does takeaway food more ambitious than most castle car parks manage: Cullen skink made with local smoked haddock, haddock in IPA batter, a hake wrap in panko and oatmeal crumbs, lamb-shoulder stovies, and a toastie of MacSween haggis, bacon and macaroni cheese. Loaded chips come with either beef brisket in beer-cheese sauce or Scottish white crab. It closes out of season, so check before you rely on it. Across the loch at Ardelve, Manuela's Wee Bakery makes bread, biscuits and both sweet and savoury baking, and runs a takeaway pizza sideline called Pizza Jo.
St Duthac's Roman Catholic Church, built in 1871 to a design by J. A. Hansom, is a plain Gothic building with a five-bay nave of lancet windows, paired bells in the bellcote and a stone reredos behind the altar. Sunday Mass is at 12:45.
The walking is serious rather than gentle. The circuit up the River Glennan and back over Carr Brae runs 11.5 miles with 778 metres of climb, threading through Carndu and Bundalloch along Loch Long, over old moorland routes and past waterfalls; parts of it are boggy and indistinct, and the river is difficult in spate. The Falls of Glomach, a 113-metre drop hidden in the hills, is a twelve-mile round trip on its own. Kyle of Lochalsh station is about eight miles down the A87, and Citylink coaches on the Inverness–Skye and Glasgow–Skye routes stop in the village.
Between walks, the hall is where the rest of village life happens. It is volunteer-run and holds a preschool playgroup, pickleball and Jane's sewing class, and the public toilets are there too. The Lochalsh Leisure Centre, with a swimming pool and gym, covers the wider area.
The village lost its shop, but the community trust took over the old building in 2023 and is renovating it, with plans for a shop, a café meant to stay open through the winter, and somewhere for people to sit — worth checking whether it has reopened by the time you visit. A ferry once crossed the outlet of the loch here, and there was a post office and a girls' school; the shop is the piece the trust is trying to bring back.