The northern tip of Skye, reached down a break in the cliffs, with an old coastguard lookout standing above it and whales passing in late summer.
The path north from the Shulista road end runs along the top of a low escarpment, with the ruins of Erisco below it and Duntulm Castle on its crag ahead, and after a mile and a half it reaches a gap between two hills.
On the right-hand one stands a white hut on the cliff edge: the old coastguard lookout, kept open as a bothy, with a bay window over the Minch to Harris.
Below it the ground stops. The way down is a break in the cliffs, a staircase of rock that looks worse from the top than it turns out to be, and then a made path under dolerite columns to a flat green headland at the very end of Skye. Two stacks stand off the east side with an arch beyond them.
July and August are the months for whales. The advice is to sit still and listen: people hear them blowing before they see anything at all.
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Eight and a half kilometres, 340 metres of climb and three to five hours for the whole round, including the drop to the headland and the climb back out of it.
A well made path runs out to the gap between the two hills; the rest is slightly boggy in places. The descent is the part people weigh up: a rocky staircase through a break in the cliffs that looks worse from the top than it turns out to be, with a clear path visible below it. Leaving the headland out makes a 6.2 kilometre round of roughly two hours that still takes in the lookout and the view from the cliff top.
Take the minor road signed for Shulista off the A855 near Kilmaluag, by the old red phone box, and park in the car park above the kiosk by the cattle grid; there is room for about eight cars.
There is nothing at all on the route: no water, no shelter but the lookout, and no food or toilets at either end. The Portree bus will set you down at the Shulista road end if you ask, and can be picked up again at Duntulm.
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The front of the white hut, the room with the bay window over the Minch, was built in 1928 by Macleans of Mull to keep an eye on the Little Minch shipping lane. It was once manned around the clock. Radio made it unnecessary, it became a bothy in the mid-1970s, and the Mountain Bothies Association took it on in 2006.
Under the Meall Tuath cliffs the rock has collapsed into a field of blocks, and heather and bilberry grow over it on a carpet of Atlantic mosses and liverworts. One of them, Campylopus pilifer, has no known locality anywhere further north in the world than this scree.
The north-facing cliffs are too steep for sheep to reach, so what grows on them has been left alone. Sea spleenwort and sea campion share the ledges with Scots lovage and with moss campion, an Arctic-alpine plant that is unusual to find growing at sea level at all.
The columns are dolerite, squeezed as molten rock between older Jurassic beds sixty million years ago. The sheet splits into leaves that divide and rejoin, yet wherever it is measured they come to much the same 230 metres. The weight of lava above seems to have stopped it rising further.
The far tip of the headland is where people come to watch the water, and July and August are the months. Minke are seen round the Hebrides from April to October, and dolphins and porpoise pass through all season. The advice from those who do it is to sit still and listen: you hear them blowing before you see them.
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What is on on SkyeThe far north end of the Trotternish peninsula, beyond Duntulm. The walk starts at the Shulista road end off the A855 near Kilmaluag, and the headland itself lies below the cliffs of Meall Tuath, looking over the Minch to Harris and Lewis.
The Lookout BothyThe white hut on the cliff above, open to anyone who walks up to it.Under a mile 1 min by road
Rubha Hunish WalkEight and a half kilometres to the top of Skye, past an open bothy on a cliff.Under a mile 1 min by road
Duntulm CastleThe MacDonald ruin on its crag, in view for most of the walk out.1 mile 3 min by road
Kilmuir CemeteryFlora MacDonald's grave, down the coast road.4 miles 6 min by road
The QuiraingThe landslip on the Trotternish ridge, to the south.6 miles 11 min by road
Kilt RockThe sea cliff and waterfall on the east coast of the peninsula.10 miles 16 min by roadPlaces to stay near the headland, and when each is next free.
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