A low headland on the Duirinish side of Loch Bracadale, looking across a narrow sound to the flat top and pale beach of Harlosh Island, with the Cuillin behind.
Harlosh runs out into Loch Bracadale as a low green headland, and the view from the end of it is the whole point: a narrow sound, then the flat top of Harlosh Island with a pale beach along its north shore, and the Cuillin standing behind the whole thing to the south.
Visited and photographed by Simon Hird
A weathered pillar of rock sits below the cliffs at the tip, with tidal pools round its foot.
There is no path and nothing waymarked. The road through the townships ends and the rest is croft ground, walked under Scotland's access rights, so keep to the edges and give the sheep room. Allow an hour there and back. Four hundred metres north, on a rock almost ringed by water at high tide, sits Dun Neill, and the sound between the point and the island is a seal haul-out on both shores. It is the walk for a day when the hills are in cloud.
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The road through the Harlosh townships ends near the point and the rest is open croft ground, which you walk under Scotland's access rights: keep to the edges, shut gates, and give the sheep room.
There is no path and nothing waymarked, and the last of it is rough grass and rock above a low cliff. Allow an hour there and back if you only want the view of the island, longer if you carry on north towards the dun.
There is nothing at the point: no car park, no sign, no toilets and nowhere to buy anything.
It is a low-level walk for a day when the Cuillin are in cloud. The sound between the point and the island is a seal haul-out, so bring something to look through.
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About 400 metres north of the point a cliff-girt rock carries Dun Neill, an oval dun 24 metres by 12 inside a wall up to 2.8 metres thick. You get in by a cleft on the north side, where one step of its stair is still where it was laid.
The dun stands on something older. A heavily robbed wall can still be traced as a band of rubble round the edge of the same stack, enclosing about 43 metres by 12: an earlier fort, quarried for stone when the dun went up on its eastern end.
The headland carries its own small settlement. The first Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1881 shows four unroofed buildings and two enclosures here; by the 1969 survey five unroofed buildings were being drawn.
The narrows between the point and Harlosh Island are seal ground, on both shores. A Sea Mammal Research Unit count put about a hundred common seals at haul-outs across Loch Bracadale, most of them by the islands.
Shag, fulmar and black guillemot breed in numbers on Wiay and Tarner, and otters work the kelp in the shallows round them. The islands are the youngest lavas left in north Skye, which is why they lie so flat and low.
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What is on on SkyeOn the Duirinish side of Loch Bracadale, at the end of the road through the Harlosh townships off the A863 between Dunvegan and Bracadale.
Isle of Skye Sea Salt CompanySalt taken from the loch you are looking at, at Roag.4 miles 5 min by road
Dunvegan CastleThe MacLeod seat, a short drive up the road.6 miles 11 min by road
Dun Beag BrochThe best-preserved broch on this coast, above the road at Struan.7 miles 8 min by road
Oronsay Island, UllinishThe next headland south, walked out to at low water.8 miles 11 min by road
Coral BeachCrushed coralline algae on the shore north of Dunvegan.10 miles 16 min by road
Talisker BayThe black beach and its waterfall, round the coast to the south.22 miles 29 min by roadPlaces to stay near the point, and when each is next free.
Harlosh Black h
The Dunvegan
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