By heather tracks wi' heaven in their wiles.

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The Road to the Isles is on the mainland, but from Allt Nan Sugh, you have to drive all the way to Fort William to get there. The shorter route is by CalMac ferry from Armadale on Skye to Mallaig. On the 1130am crossing, we saw porpoises off the port bow.

The road runs for 46 miles through green glens. We went only as far as Glenfinnan. At the Visitor Centre, the National Trust for Scotland has a variety of schemes for taking your money, from a fee for the car park, through an honesty box outside the toilets, to selling tickets for the Bonnie Prince Charlie monument. This last, a figure of the Young Pretender atop a tower, commemorates the Jacobite uprising of 1745. Here is reputed to be the very spot where he raised the Jacobite standard. From the car park, or from a viewing point at the top of a muddy path, you can see the thousand-foot sweep of a viaduct, over which runs the West Highland Railway (and the Hogwarts Express in the Harry Potter films).

We parked on the Rhue peninsula and looked out to the flat-topped peak on Eigg, then stopped in Arisaig for hot soup.

Near Morar is Camusdarrach beach. The road passes a number of bays with caravan sites, but Camusdarrach is overlooked only by a couple of houses. On the approach, the dunes form walls along the path and sound is deadened by the sand. This was the beach in Bill Forsyth's "Local Hero", where Fulton Mackay lived in a wooden house and Burt Lancaster landed by helicopter. Here, clear water crept over the sand; Skye and Rum formed a grey-blue skyline in the warm afternoon light.

Deep Loch Morar claims its own monster, Morag. Sightings have been reported from 1887 onwards. One report, in 1948, describes a "serpent-like creature about 20 ft long". In 1969, two men asserted that they hit the creature accidentally with their speedboat, and it retaliated, retreating only when one opened fire with his rifle. Morag is as mythical as Nessie: searches have failed to find any evidence that she exists.

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