№ 14Loch · Isle of Skye, Scotland
Loch Coruisk
A loch sealed inside the Black Cuillin, reached by open boat — or a scramble the guidebooks call the Bad Step.
Photographs Graham Lewis (CC BY 2.0) · lydia harper lids_harper (CC0) · Chris Gorringe (CC BY-SA 2.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Loch Coruisk lies in a bowl of bare gabbro in the heart of the Black Cuillin, closer in spirit to Mordor than to anywhere with a postcode. Walter Scott put it in a poem in 1815 and the Victorians duly arrived by steamer to be terrified; Turner painted it as weather with rock in it.
It has lost none of that. Small boats run in from Elgol past a seal colony and drop you at the stepping stones where the loch empties into the sea; the walkers' alternative rounds the coast over a tilted slab called the Bad Step, which is honestly named. Once you're inside, the mountains close the door behind you.
The knowledge
- Getting there
- Boats run from Elgol roughly April to October — the Bella Jane and Misty Isle both give you time ashore, longer by arrangement.
- Best time
- A still day in May or September: midge-light, boat-friendly, and the Cuillin ridge doubled in the water.
- Local tip
- Ask for the later return sailing — an hour ashore is exactly long enough to want three.
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