A Raasay roundabout

About trip

Minimum Time: 3hrs 45mins Ascent: 820ft Difficulty Level: 2 - Medium Paths: Small but clear paths, some tracks, 1 stile Landscape: Shingle beaches, woodland and moorland Dog Friendliness: Close control in woodland and moor, keep on lead near livestock Parking: Ferry terminal at Sconser, Skye (or lay-by to east) Public Toilets: Sconser ferry terminal and start of walk Description: In his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson (1773), Scottish biographer James Boswell described the island of Raasay. ‘It was a most pleasing approach to Raasay. We saw before us a beautiful bay, well defended with a rocky coast; a good gentleman’s house, a fine verdure about it, a considerable number of trees, and beyond it hills and mountains in gradation of wildness. Our boatmen sung with great spirit.’ Boswell and Macleod. Boswell found Raasay a delight. He enjoyed the company of Macleod the laird and his ten beautiful daughters, he was impressed by the fine food and the two pet parrots, he enjoyed the landscape and he very much enjoyed his walk. He rose before six and, after a light breakfast of dry bread and whisky, set off with the laird. The aim was the island’s highest point, Dun Caan. Once there, they lunched on cold mutton and brandy, and danced a Highland reel on its flat summit. They returned by way of Beinn a’ Chapuill, and in the afternoon ‘there came a heavy rain, by which we were a great deal wet’. Their walk totalled 24 miles altogether (39km). By way of a warm-down, Boswell ‘exerted himself extraordinarily in dancing, drinking porter heavily’. ‘If I had my wife and little daughters with me, I would stay long enough,’ said Boswell. And today Raasay, with its well-laid paths (22 of them, all together), its woodlands and moors and small beaches, offers walking for everyone, with none of the mainland’s turgid bog and skinshredding gabbro. Boswell and his companion Dr Johnson felt highly honoured by the boatman who ferried them to Raasay, for just 27 years before, the sailor had carried the Bonnie Prince in the opposite direction. Prince Charles Stuart had sheltered on Raasay for as long as was safe, then crossed to the mainland and walked across the moors to Strath. The boatman told Boswell that the prince had been a stronger walker than himself, but that he’d had to dissuade him from littering the countryside with his empty brandy bottle. Even today, some walkers need similar education. As punishment for sheltering the prince, the island was stripped of its cattle and every house burnt. The restoration of Raasay House was almost complete when Boswell visited. He had just one complaint. While the ruins of the former castle boasted an ancient garderobe, the new house had no such ‘convenience’, and Johnson reproached the laird accordingly. ‘You take very good care of one end of a man, but not of the other!’ While you're there: ‘A little off the shore is a kind of subterraneous house. There has been a natural fissure or separation of the rock, running towards the sea, roofed over with long stones, and above them turf... in that place the inhabitants used to keep their oars.’ Forgotten since Boswell’s time, this souterrain has been ediscovered at Point 2. What to look out for: Seals and otters play in North Bay. A seal will usually show only its dark brown head, often lifting it far out of the water. An otter sighting is less common, although shoreline otters are less timid than river ones. Where to eat and drink: Raasay House is now an outdoor centre and at its Dolphin Café you can enjoy fresh coffee where James Boswell and Dr Samuel Johnson dined on chops and claret, and danced with the ten beautiful Macleod daughters. Directions: CalMac ferries run roughly hourly during the day to the island of Raasay. Turn left on the island’s small road. At Inverarish, turn left over a bridge and divert left past cottages and along the shore. After a playing field you then rejoin the road, which leads past the Isle of Raasay Hotel to another road junction. 2 Uamh na Ramh souterrain is over a stile on the left. Continue ahead past the superb but neglected stable block (ahead now is Raasay House, an outdoor centre). At the corner of the stable, turn left, signed ‘Clachan’. A track continues below the ramparts of an old gun battery decorated with two stone mermaids. From the pier, follow a path around the bay, until a gate leads to a pleasant shoreline path to Eilean Aird nan Gobhar. Check the tides before crossing the rocks to this tidal island. 3 Head inland over a rock knoll, then pass along the left-hand edge of a plantation on a muddy path overhung by rhododendron. Continue along the shore of North Bay, with a pine plantation on your right, round to a headland. Go up briefly through the low basalt cliff and return along its top. Head along the left edge of the plantation, to emerge through a decorative iron gate on to a road. 4 Turn left for 180yds (165m) to a grey gate on the right. A green track leads up and to the right into a craggy valley. At a walled paddock it turns left and right to join a tarred track. Follow this down past a lily lochan (Loch a’ Mhuilinn) and turn left across its dam. Join a wide path running up under larch and rhododendron but, in 100yds (91m), bear right, waymarked ‘Temptation Hill Trail’. Look out for a side path on the right which leads up to Dun Bhorogh Dail, the remains of an Iron Age broch (tower). The main path leads down to pass an austere white church, then bends to the right and drops to a tarred road. 5 Turn sharp left up the road for 0.25 mile (400m), then right at a signpost for Burma Road. The track shrinks to a path as it bends left and climbs quite steeply. It becomes a forest track, passing white waymarkers, finally reaching the abandoned buildings of an old iron mine. 6 When you get to the tarred road beyond, turn up left to a signpost for the Miners’ Trail. Here turn right on the green track of a former railway. Where a viaduct has been removed, a new-built path descends steeply and then climbs again to regain the railbed. The blue-waymarked Miners’ Trail turns off, but your route follows the railway onwards, across a stretch of moor and down to the ferry terminal.