The B8083 from Broadford to Elgol is 14 miles of single-track road through landscapes that get progressively more dramatic with every mile. It passes Loch Cill Chriosd, a small loch below the ruins of an old church, and then climbs and descends through bare moorland with the Red Hills to the north and the sea glinting to the south. The road ends at a steep cluster of houses above a jetty where fishing boats were once launched.
The view from Elgol across Loch Scavaig to the Black Cuillin is the centrepiece: a wall of dark gabbro rising directly from the water, with virtually no transition between sea level and 900-metre peaks. Boat trips from the jetty run to Loch Coruisk, a freshwater loch entirely hemmed in by the Cuillin ridge and accessible by land only by a scramble over the Bad Step. The trip takes about an hour each way and gives an hour ashore — enough to walk the loch's southern shore and understand why this place has been drawing painters and writers for two centuries.