Eilean Flodigarry, Trotternish, Isle of Skye, Scotland

Flodigarry may be just a loose collection of houses, but there's history here too. A certain Flora MacDonald from South Uist lived in what is now the Flodigarry House Hotel. Here claim to fame was that she helped Bonnie Prince Charlie to return to France after his ill-fated rebellion that started positively enough but ended in defeat at Culloden outside Inverness in 1745, an effort that gained her a statue in front of Inverness Castle. With it, centuries of a proud Highland culture were at an end with only the memory living on these days, and I am not just talking about tartan and the romanticisation of the past by the likes of Sir Walter Scott. Away from the highs and lows of the past, the coastal scenery has its wonders around here too with the low-sized islands of Eilean Flodigarry and Sgeir na h-Èireann off the coast in blue seas on a sunny day. That the contorted landscape is a distraction for the eyes is a bonus that allows your mind to drift away from all that history.