Isle of Raasay
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Travelling west from Broadford, with the Skye Cuillin to your left and the sea to your right, it's thirteen miles to Sconsor, where a CalMac car ferry leaves for the Isle of Raasay (Mon-Sat 9-10 daily; 15min), a nature conservancy area, which offers great walks across its bleak and barren hills, and remains well off the tourist trail. Raasay's population stands at around 160, most of them members of the Free Presbyterian Church. Strict observance of the Sabbath - no work or play on Sundays - is the most obvious manifestation for visitors, who should respect the islanders' feelings.
The ferry docks at the southern tip of the island, an easy fifteen-minute walk from INVERARISH, a tiny village set within thick woods on the island's southwest coast. Raasay House, built by the MacLeods in the late 1740s, is now the Raasay Outdoor Centre, offering comfortable accommodation in tastefully bohemian rooms (tel 01478/660266, raasay.house@virgin.net; under £40; March to mid-Oct). You can camp in the grounds and, for a daily cost of around £25, join in the centre's activity programme: anything from sailing, windsurfing and canoeing, to climbing and hillwalking. Close by is the likeably old-fashioned Isle of Raasay Hotel (tel 01478/660222; £50-60), which serves delicious traditional Scottish food (bunkroom accommodation is also provided at £10 per person); in the village is a pleasant Victorian guest house, Churchton House (tel 01478/660260; under £40).
A rough track cuts up the steep hillside from the village to Raasay's isolated but beautifully placed SYHA hostel (tel 01478/660240, www.syha.org.uk; mid-May to Sept). Most of the rest of Raasay is starkly barren, a rugged and rocky terrain of sandstone in the south and gneiss in the north, with the most obvious feature being the curiously truncated basalt cap on top of Dun Caan (1456ft), where Boswell "danced a Highland dance" on his visit to the island with Dr Johnson in 1773.
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