Kylesku

The harbour and its hotel

The road into Kylesku drops steeply to a slipway, a small harbour and a white hotel on the water. This is the end of it. The A894 no longer comes down here, having been carried over the sea channel on a curved bridge since 1984, and what remains at the bottom is a fishing hamlet of a few houses at the point where Loch Glencoul and Loch Gleann Dubh empty into Loch a' Chàirn Bhàin.

The Kylesku Hotel dates back to at least 1883 and was once a coaching inn. The kitchen leans on what is close: fish and seafood from the coastal waters, pork and beef from neighbouring crofts. The Michelin Guide singles out the langoustines and mussels, landed two hundred yards away. Dogs are welcome in the bar and the residents' lounge, though not in the restaurant at dinner, so mention the dog when you book a bar table. The bar keeps local beers and ales, single malts and Scottish gins, and there is a deck outside to sit over the loch. An annex opened in 2015 called Willie's Hoose, named for Willie Elliott, a lifelong resident and storyteller who died in 2018.

Crafts, geology and the lochs

Opposite the hotel, on the old ferry slipway, the Old Ferry Craft Shop is an artists' cooperative selling jewellery, knitwear, photographs and candles. It is a craft shop rather than a grocery; the hotel serves meals, but bring any groceries you need with you. A mile south, over the bridge at Unapool, the Rock Stop is a Geopark visitor centre. The main café's 2026 season has finished; the free geology exhibition, gift shop and light refreshments are available on selected dates.

Most people come for what is around the village rather than in it. North West Sea Tours runs hour-long trips from the harbour up Lochs Glencoul and Glendhu, in sheltered water, toward Eas a' Chùal Aluinn — at two hundred metres, widely described as Britain's highest waterfall — and out looking for seals, seabirds, golden eagles and white-tailed eagles. Dogs come aboard. The waterfall can also be reached on foot, a six-mile walk from the A894 at Loch na Gainmhich that begins very boggy and turns rocky, with Quinag and Glas Bheinn filling the skyline. The viewpoint sits near the top of the drop; the cliff edge is dangerous, and you cannot see the full fall from above.

Crossing Kylesku Bridge

The bridge itself repays a walk across. It has a footway, and from 276 metres of curved concrete you look down on the meeting of three lochs. Ove Arup designed it, the curve chosen to follow the land and the existing roads; the Queen opened it on 8 August 1984, and it is now a set piece on the North Coast 500. Before it, a ferry crossed here from the early nineteenth century. The last of them, the roll-on Maid of Glencoul, ran only in daylight, and missing the final sailing meant a hundred and ten miles inland to get round. She is still afloat, working the Corran crossing as a relief boat.

The wartime cairn

North of the bridge a cairn, put up in 1993, remembers the men who trained in these lochs during the war. Crews of X-craft midget submarines rehearsed here for the 1943 attack on the German battleship Tirpitz in a Norwegian fjord.

Ancient rock and quiet arrivals

For a place with barely any of the usual village machinery, Kylesku is well supplied with grandeur: the Lewisian gneiss of the surrounding Geopark is over three billion years old, among the oldest rocks in the UK. Lairg has a railway station, but onward public transport to Kylesku is limited. When the wind is still, Kylesku can be one of the quietest places you are likely to encounter. Stand on the slipway after the day boats are in, and it holds.