Three Lochs View

Built from the ruin next door

Three Lochs View stands above the water at Upper Ardelve, arranged around one outlook. Eilean Donan Castle sits on its island below the window, the Five Sisters of Kintail rise behind it, and the water in front is where Loch Alsh, Loch Duich and Loch Long meet. The owners grew up here and built the place themselves, from stone taken out of a nearby ruin and cut to shape by a local mason.

It is one bedroom, with a hand-made king bed, an open plan kitchen and living room warmed by a gas stove, a utility room with a washer dryer, and a bathroom holding both a bath and a walk-in rainfall shower. The kitchen splashback is a map of the area. Outside, the hot tub on the deck faces the same way the windows do.

A large covered entrance takes wet boots and dries them on a clothes pulley, and bikes or canoes can be stored securely by arrangement.

Good to know

Features

Location

Where it puts you

The cottage sits beside the A87, the road almost everyone takes to reach Skye, fifteen minutes away over the bridge. It is also the last stretch of the run across from Glencoe, so it is a stop on that drive rather than a detour from it.

Dornie is five minutes by car or about half an hour on foot, with the Clachan Bar and the Dornie Hotel for an evening. Ardelve has Manuela's bakery, which doubles as a pizza restaurant at night and houses a gin distillery, plus a coffee shop called All the Goodness.

Further afield, the owners send people over the Bealach nam Ba to Applecross at the southern end of the North Coast 500, and down to the Glenelg to Kylerhea crossing, which they call the last manually operated turntable ferry in the world.