Plockton's Seals and Castle Moil – A Family Day
A day.
The route
Calum's Seal Trips take families out from Plockton for an hour on Loch Carron, to the rocks where the seals haul out, and the trip is free if there are no seals.
Lunch is on the harbour front in Plockton, then it's over the Skye Bridge to Kyleakin, where the broken walls of Castle Moil stand on their knoll above the strait.
Before you go
Book accommodation nearby
If you are staying over: here are ours nearest where the day starts and ends.
Book Calum's Seal Trips' one-hour seal trip on its website or on 01599 544306 for a morning sailing (10am or 11.30am), every day from spring to the end of October, weather permitting, with no trips from Friday 16 to Monday 19 October 2026: £18 an adult and £9 a child of 4 to 16 at the time of writing, and a full refund if the trip is cancelled.
Ring the Plockton Hotel on 01599 544274 to book a table for lunch and check when the kitchen is serving.
The day
Plockton
An hour among the seals on Loch Carron, a harbour-front lunch in Plockton, and a ruined castle over the water at Kyleakin.
About five hours
Calum's Seal Trips
Park in Plockton's main car park on Innes Street, where paying is an invitation rather than a rule, with public toilets beside it in the season. Calum's Seal Trips' boat, the Sula Bheag, sails for an hour on Loch Carron at 10am, 11.30am, 2pm and 3.30pm, every day from spring to the end of October, weather permitting; there are no trips from Friday 16 to Monday 19 October 2026. It leaves from the pontoon beside the car park or from the main pier, 10 minutes' walk through the village, depending on the tide, and the gift shop on Harbour Street posts which. Tickets are £18 for an adult, £9 for a child of 4 to 16 and £50 for a family with two children at the time of writing, and under-4s go free. If there are no seals, the trip is free. Babies can come on board, and a dog on a lead can come if you book it a free place. There are steps up onto the boat and down to its toilet, so a wheelchair user should talk to the crew first.
The Plockton Hotel
Lunch
Lunch is a short walk along Harbour Street at the Plockton Hotel, the black-and-white house among the cabbage palms, with a beer garden looking over Loch Carron. Its kitchen cooks seafood from these waters, Highland steaks and light lunches. It usually opens from 11am, and from noon on Sundays: ring 01599 544274 to book a table and check when the kitchen is serving. If it's full, the Plockton Inn on Innes Street, by the car park, serves lunch from noon to 2.30pm and has highchairs for little ones.
26 min by car
Caisteal Maol
An attraction
It's 26 minutes' drive over the Skye Bridge to Kyleakin, on the Skye side of the strait. Park in the village and walk along the harbour to the rocky knoll at its mouth, where Castle Moil, Caisteal Maol in Gaelic, stands. Two tall, broken walls are all that's left of the Mackinnons' stronghold, which watched over the narrow strait between Skye and the mainland. The story goes that a Norse princess known as Saucy Mary had a chain stretched across the water to make passing ships pay a toll. You can walk out to it at low tide, over rough, rocky ground that's slippery when wet, so check the tide times for Kyleakin. At high water it can be cut off, and the shore gives a fine view of it instead. It isn't for a pushchair, the walls are fragile, and small children need a hand to hold.
If it rains
The seal trip is out on the water and goes only in fit weather; in steady rain take a longer lunch by the hotel's fire and look at Castle Moil from Kyleakin's shore.
Plockton Inn, a restaurant in Plockton.