Читать книгу The Isle of Skye. Graded walks and scrambles throughout Skye, including the Cuillin онлайн

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Not far from the loch a minor road loops round to Ord, Dunscaith and Tarskavaig, a splendid drive with many opportunities to patrol the beaches on Sleat’s northern coastline, gazing across Loch Eishort to the mountainous country beyond.

Armadale merely serves to underscore the ‘southern’ feel of Sleat. The castle, built in the 18th century, is attractively set amid woods and lawns. There is some lack of certainty about when Armadale was built. One record claims it for Alexander Wentworth of Sleat, born in 1775; another, published in 1725, mentions a ‘place of residence, adorned with stately edifices, pleasant gardens and other policies called Armodel’; while yet earlier records detail, in 1690, how Armadale House was burned by the King’s fleet.

Sleat does not end at Armadale. Beyond lies Ardvasar, quite a large township on Armadale Bay, and beyond that the scattering of buildings that comprise Aird of Sleat, the final gateway to southernmost Skye at the Point of Sleat.

South-East Skye

With the opening of the bridge between Kyle of Lochalsh and Kyleakin in 1995, the Island, in a sense, lost its isolation, but gained a speedier link between island and mainland, although in reality only the summer months ever saw any significant delay. Quite what the effects will be only time will tell: maybe the tiny ferry that plies between Glenelg and Kylerhea will sink (hopefully not literally) under the weight of purists shunning the bridge in favour of traditional ways of reaching the Island; perhaps someone will devise a bridge to Kylerhea, and blaze a wide road up to the Bealach Udal and down Glen Arroch. (Thankfully, that latter option doesn’t make any kind of economic sense.)