Our islands have become the custodians of character, where the busy grocery and car-free country road are not just a bygone. On these time-protected sanctuaries you still meet the Morris Minor burbling between hawthorn hedges to greet the morning ferry, the postie loading mail sacks and Amazon packets into an open boat. Nothing's quite the same on an island.

Clattering on to the deck of the Skye ferry in the Arctic half-light of a January blizzard, I felt as if we were crossing to a land invented by Tolkien. I first went to Skye as a teenager to climb mountains. Back then the island felt as remote as Spitsbergen. It still feels very Lord of the Rings. Toothsome fangs of old grey rock loom 3,000ft above silent lochs and hobbity crofts, while paths climb in riddles to the clouds. These days the ferry has been replaced by a slender parabola of concrete, so the transition from mainland to island is less sensational, but Skye is still a world apart.

There are sights on Skye you will see nowhere else in Britain. Up in the north, the road between Staffin and Uig squirms above the 250m contour past the pinnacles and cliffs of Quiraing, with its alien place-names such as The Needle, The Prison and The Table. Over on the west coast, on the moor beyond Talisker, there's a mountain walled with polygonal columns of solidified lava as strange as the Giant's Causeway. Then there are the Black Cuillins, the most ferocious range of peaks in Britain.

One of the most extraordinary boat trips in Britain can be taken from Elgol to the fjord-like chasm of och Coruisk, painted giddily by Turner and described by Lord Tennyson as "the wildest scene in the Highlands".

Where to stay and eat Sligachan Inn (01478 650204; sligachan.co.uk) set beneath the Black Cuillins with a sea loch on one side and mountains on the other. It has a little garden and a decent restaurant.

Information isleofskye.com.

Nick Crane

Forget Stonehenge and the Pyramids; the island of Mainland, largest among the Orkney Islands, is the place to come for prehistory. At each end of an isthmus, squeezed between lochs are the stone circles of Brodgar and Stenness. The Ring of Brodgar is the largest stone circle in Scotland and 27 of the original 60 stones remain. Nearby is Maeshowe, the most remarkable passage grave in Britain built in about 2,700BC and aligned on the midwinter sunset. In the 12th century, Vikings tagged the grave with graffiti. One of the less vulgar messages reads "Haermund Hardaxe carved these runes".

But Brodgar, Stenness and Maeshowe are just the prehistoric warm-up for Skara Brae, over on the west coast of Mainland, beside the Bay of Skaill. It's a Neolithic village, complete with walls and stone furniture. Built 5,000 years ago, before Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids, the village was engulfed intact by drifting sand. Now the houses have reappeared, complete with their box beds and hearths, and even the stone dressers that would have been used to display family treasures. You are closer to your ancient British ancestors on this island than in any capital city.

Where to stay and eat The Lynnfield Hotel and Restaurant (01856 872505; lynnfield.co.uk).

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