A pocket guide to ferries, beaches, soft-boiled eggs and where to sleep on islands most people have not heard of. Forty pages, two folded maps, one author who is too often there.
Northland is what I wish I'd had the first time I went up. Most travel writing about the Scottish islands cares about whisky and lighthouses and not very much else; this guide cares about how to get there, where to be after the boat docks, and which of the four cafés on Hoy is open on a Tuesday in March. (The answer changes every year. I check.)
Eight islands, in order from west to east. Each chapter has the same shape: how to arrive, where to sleep, where to eat, one walk worth taking, and a paragraph of things I think you should not miss. The maps are at the back — folded, removable, printed on a slightly thicker paper than the rest.
The first edition came out in spring 2024. This second edition has been re-walked, re-eaten, and re-checked across last summer and autumn. The ferry timetables are accurate as of February. They will be wrong by August. Use the QR codes.
Three Outer Hebrides, two Inner, two of the Northern Isles, and a small bonus chapter on a tidal island most maps miss. Each island gets four to six pages in the guide.
Eigg is the kind of island most people imagine when they imagine a Scottish island, except quieter and with better coffee. Owned by its residents since 1997; runs on a hybrid wind, water and solar grid. The single road is six miles end-to-end and you will, eventually, walk all of it.
Where to sleep: Glebe Barn (excellent), the Eigg Camping Pods (cheap, twenty yards from the beach), or one of three croft-rentals that book up before May.
One walk: An Sgùrr, the basalt pitchstone ridge that dominates the island. Three hours up and down, an actual scramble at the top, the view does not disappoint.
Hoy is the second-largest of the Orkney islands and, in my opinion, the most worthwhile. The cliffs are tall, the wind is constant, and the village of Rackwick — a single curving bay of pink sandstone — is the kind of place that justifies a six-hour drive north.
The Old Man of Hoy itself is a 137m sea stack, half a day's walk from the ferry. People climb it. Most of us watch them, from a respectful distance with a flask.
The B&B at the Beneth-Hill is the most useful place to sleep — Helen and Marina have been hosting since 2008 and have, between them, walked every footpath on the island.
This is the small bonus chapter — Davaar isn't an island most of the time. A natural shingle bar called the Dhorlin connects it to the mainland for around six hours either side of low tide. Walk out at exactly the right time. Walk back at exactly the right time. The shingle is, on each crossing, slightly different.
On the cliff: a 1887 painting of the crucifixion in a sea cave, painted by a local schoolmaster who told no-one until he had finished. It is still there. It has been retouched, by various hands, four times. Bring a torch.
The most useful thing this guide does is tell you when the tide is right. Inside is a thirty-year tide table for the Dhorlin, generated and verified. Do not rely on the QR code on this page; rely on the printed table in the guide.
Six practical pieces of information that I wish someone had told me before my first trip up. None of these are particularly hard, but they all save a half-day or several pounds.
Either you want the paper thing — folded maps, slightly heavier paper at the back, the satisfying physical object — or you want the PDF, which fits on a phone and goes in a sailing-bag without complaint.