It was exactly 50 years ago that Britt Ekland, Christopher Lee and Edward Woodward starred in The Wicker Man; one of the strangest and most haunting British films ever made, about a remote (and fictional) Scottish island where pagan beliefs still held sway.
Sadly, the film itself was mostly filmed in the rather humdrum environs of Dumfries, only a few miles over the border from England and firmly a part of the Scottish mainland.
Perhaps it’s the legacy of the Wicker Man that means that, when it comes to admiring the bucolic expanses and ruddy heights of the Scottish islands, most visitors stick firmly to the well-trodden routes around the islands of Skye, Mull and Harris.
Yet, if you’re willing to set aside your fears of seeing a kilt-clad Christopher Lee yomping around the next corner, there are so many more islands in the Western Isles and off the northern coast of Scotland that are not nearly so chocka with hikers in the spring and summer months. Here are five of our favourite Scottish islands to visit. And there’s not a retro 1970s pagan in sight…
