Launching a canoe off the slipway here is the golden ticket that unlocks Isle Ristol, a Scottish Wildlife Trust Reserve a few hundred metres from the harbour across a perfectly transparent channel, with lounging seals plopping off their rocks as you pass. Wedging the canoe onto dry land, it’s a lung-busting romp over seaweed, through bracken and wildflowers up the hill and then down the other side to your prize: a long sandy beach that’s so absurdly white, with such absurdly turquoise sea that it’s referred to exclusively as the ‘Caribbean beach’ in our family. And it’s here that the pace slows and the day unfolds in the same way it has since I first came, trawling the beach for cowrie shells, scoffing toasted marshmallows when the wind dies enough for the fire to burn, and nestling lifejackets into the sand dunes as sun loungers until the midges threaten to descend and you make a hurried evacuation off the island.
Opposite the ‘Caribbean beach’ on the mainland is the peninsula’s only pub, the dimly lit Am Fuaran Bar where you can pick up fish and chips (dependent on what’s been caught that day) through a hatch to take down to the white sandy beach below the pub, next to the Port a Bhaigh Campsite. Or you can settle inside – the jukebox merrily playing – to stacks of buttery scallops with homemade chips laboriously peeled and sliced in-house.
In the village shop, there are still the pick-and-mix from my childhood (essential bribes for walks in knee-deep heather), but also stacks of smoked fish, dressed crabs and Linda’s Chocolate Brownies to stash for picnics.
There’s the woodfired Teuchter Sauna that flits between the peninsula’s best beaches. And on Badentarbet pier is the Bothan, restored as part of the Tanera project, a haven for a post-sauna, icy dip, coffee and whatever cake has been baked that day, next to the roaring wood burner. Perching in the window here is a happy time sapper, like watching a play in slow time: the weather raging and then dying down again; the thrill of spying a pod of dolphins with the help of some binoculars; a triple-masted sailing boat piquing your interest; the interruption of the CalMac ferry stoically chugging past bound for Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis.