Isle of Skye

A basalt pinnacle an old landslip left upright, an hour's climb above the car park. The path was rebuilt so there is less mud, but the last stretch runs on loose rock. The car park now charges, and drivers are asked to keep off verges and passing places.

The Black Cuillin ridge cannot be walked across; it needs rope and experience. The rock is gabbro and peridotite, and magnetic minerals in it pull a compass needle off true in places. The Red Cuillin beside it is granite, rounded, and can be walked.

A burn coming off the Cuillin drops through a chain of pools, and the water reads blue. The cold is sharp enough that swimmers get in and straight back out. The path crosses the burn several times, and after rain those crossings become impassable.

Vertical basalt columns give the cliff its pleated look, which the name points at. Mealt Falls tips into the sea beside it, a contrary wind pushes the water back up, and the viewpoint stands beside the car park itself.

A lighthouse at the island's western tip; you drop down to it and climb back, which makes the return the harder half. The concrete steps turn slippery when wet, so hold the rail going down, and it faces the sunset, which fills the parking on summer evenings.

Repeated landslips shaped this ground and it is still moving, which cracks the road below it every year. The circuit takes something like two and a half hours and includes one narrow ledge. Parking is scarce, and latecomers find none.

One family has lived here more than eight hundred years, so the inside feels like a house rather than a museum. A worn scrap of silk called the Fairy Flag hangs framed, said to have been unfurled twice in battle. Boats go out from the shore to see seals.

The sand separates into stripes of black volcanic grit and broken white shell, a thin waterfall comes down the cliff at one side, and the car stays at the farm gate for a twenty-minute walk in.

The houses round the harbour are painted different colours, which shows even under cloud. Most of the island's people live in this one village, so its bank and filling station have no rival anywhere else, and evening boats land creels on the quay.

Before the bridge opened in 1995 the only way across was by boat. Protests against the toll ran for years. Crossing has been free since 2004, and only the toll booth building is left. Traffic in summer has risen, crowding the narrow roads further.

A castle on an islet where 3 lochs meet, a 15-minute drive on the mainland side of the Skye Bridge. It lay ruined until rebuilding began in 1912 and ran 20 years. A stone footbridge leads in; on a calm early morning the walls mirror in the water.

A small valley above Uig in the north, crowded with cone-shaped grassy knolls. The one capped by a rock outcrop, called the castle, can be climbed. Locals keep dismantling the stone spirals visitors lay out, so leave the stones where they are.

A white beach some 30 minutes on foot beyond the Claigan parking area, north of Dunvegan. What looks like sand is not coral but sun-bleached fragments of chalky seaweed. Under clear skies the water turns jade, though it is bitterly cold.

Whisky has been made on the loch shore at Carbost since 1830, the island's oldest distillery. Tours are small and need booking, and drivers get their tasting measures bottled to take away. A little oyster shack nearby is the usual second stop.

From the pier at Elgol in the south, boats run into Loch Coruisk, shut in by the Cuillin. They pass seals lounging on skerries and leave you time ashore to walk the loch. The single-track road to Elgol is narrow and twisting, so allow plenty of time.

A 19th century stone bridge facing the Cuillin head-on, beside a hotel where climbers gather. Legend says dipping your face in the burn beneath for 7 seconds grants eternal beauty. The water is so icy that few manage more than a few seconds.

An open-air museum on a hillside at Kilmuir in the north, a cluster of thatched stone cottages kept with their old furnishings. Flora MacDonald, who helped Prince Charles escape, is buried in the graveyard above. It opens only from around Easter to September.