From Issue Five of Hidden Scotland Magazine

Neverland Found - Eilean Shona Island

A slow stay on the island of Eilean Shona.

Words by Karla Hall · Photographs by Jack Cairney

Printed in Issue Five of Hidden Scotland Magazine, Autumn and Winter 2022–23.

Sometimes, the important thing is the calm. To slow down and let your mind rest, to feel your shoulders unknot, to be in a place where all that matters is NOW and THIS and the touch and sound of the outdoors: the clink of lochside pebbles, the scent of the pine forest, the great breath of the wild. Farewell WiFi, farewell emails, farewell electricity. You’re in this world now, not that other world, and the important thing is the calm.

Neverland Found - Eilean Shona Island, photograph by Jack Cairney

We’ve come to the island of Eilean Shona to be somewhere special. There are plenty of special places in Scotland, but there aren’t many quite like this. On the map, trace your finger into the Highlands until you find Fort William. Then go west for 30 miles – not west as the car drives, but west as the eagle flies, over the peaks of Lochaber, over shimmering Loch Shiel, until you reach the mighty inlets of the coast. Then focus in on the fjord-like channel of Loch Moidart, where amid the sky-high slopes and the wooded foreshore there lies an island. This is the calm. This is Eilean Shona.

It’s removed from the rest of the world, and not just by a body of water. There are no cars, no roads and no pubs. The entire island – two-and-a-half miles long and one-and-a-half miles wide, comprising 600 acres of woodland and 1,500 acres of hill country – holds one house and a scattering of nine self-catering cottages. The idea of coming here to go back to basics isn’t so much encouraged as inevitable. If you’re looking for bright lights and high-rise hotels, look elsewhere. If you’re looking for the kind of getaway where red deer roam the trees and grey herons stalk the shallows – and hang on, was that a pine marten? – you’re in the right place.

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