A lovely walk, but I’d recommend giving yourself the day to really enjoy it to the full. There are two fantastic stretches of rich woodland (one in a SSSI) connected by very boggy paths that take some picking across in places. Definitely wear waterproof shoes, rather than thinking you can style it out in trail runners ‘cause it hasn’t rained for days . The views across to the Cuillin and Rum at the shore, and a little gem of a white sand beach, are worth lingering over.

We did the walk on a mid-May day after a decent dry spell. The ‘unpromising’ start was a short downhill section with cracking views. This quickly turned into a lovely mixed deciduous woodland with willow, birch, rowan and cherry, much of it looks to have been planted in recent years. It was absolutely heaving with willow warblers, song thrushes and cuckoos.

The path then descended onto a short yomp across boggy, undulating ground to the ruined house, the woodland birds being replaced by stonechat, whinchat and wheatear. Through the deer fence you enter the SSSI and pass into woodland. The woodland in this deer-fenced section is properly magical - a rich ground flora including plenty of wood anemone, primrose and wood sorrel, carpets of mosses and twisty birch, rowan and willow crusted with lichen. It’s still pretty wet underfoot for stretches in there, but not as bad as the open bog. The tall beech and pine are similarly magical and there are plenty of logs to sit and have your lunch on.




On the other side of the woods is a dry stretch of good path just long enough to lull you into a false sense of security before you descend back into wet-feet territory around Dalavil itself, and the final stretch to the shore is downright waterlogged, but worth it for the view of the Cuillin, Rum and Canna. The coast itself looks well worth some of your time, with rocky coves and little white sand beaches - sadly we ran out of time to explore it.