Paddleboarding on The Isle of Skye

Up until this point, the sea loch had been silk-smooth and sparkling — the definition of holiday blue — and we had been paddling the sun-charged shallows of Coral Island, a sandy skerry to get adventurers dreaming. To one side was a heather-clad slope climbing to meet a pine forest, its stags skulking inside. To the other, across the surface of Loch Eishort, the keel-shaped spine of the Black Cuillin hills, rising as if right from the water. “Britain’s most beautiful mountains,” said our SUP guide, by way of introduction, “and yet, a view so extraordinary it’s beyond the reach of most people.

The gentle rhythms and hard igneous lines of the Isle of Skye’s coast can be overwhelming, even for those who know the island best. On the face of it Scotland’s most-touted island is the last place you’d expect to find backcountry adventure — it does, after all, cater to everyone, with options from family-friendly hikes and distillery tours to an unexpected Jurassic-era dinosaur museum, and a glen imbued with fairy folktales. And, with international travel still not yet fully open, these are all places that will have even more attention this autumn.

And yet, Skye’s Atlantic face remains a blank space at the top of the British map for adventurers. Only in recent years, thanks to the rise in popularity of SUP and sea kayaking, has exploring its nooks, crannies and caves become possible for most of us. The idea of discovering a familiar place from a new angle — to see parts of the coastline that you can’t otherwise reach — was the clincher for me.

The landscape looked empty at first — a watercolour, still and inspiring — but, up close, I found detail everywhere. Cormorants drying their wings in the sun; submarine maerl beds and vermilion sea kelp shifting in slow-motion; squirming fish and oystercatchers trying to debone them. On another day, we might have seen and heard more — a purring fishing boat, perhaps, or a farmer revving his 4x4 to herd wayward sheep — and for a moment I completely lost my sense of geography. Paddling in golden sunlight, the v-shaped hull breaking the surface tension with ease, we could have been in St Kitts. Not Skye. The first day’s climax was claiming our own private island for the afternoon, then retreating to set up camp in the shadows of Dunscaith Castle, an off-shore ruin with a story lost to the tides. The island was a bonanza of footprint-free sand and translucent waters, its exotic backbone focussing our minds on how lucky we were.