At low tide, a stretch of sand joins Erraid to the Ross of Mull from Knockvologan; the rest of the time the island is cut off, so check tide times before you cross. Stone cottages here were built in the 1860s as a shore station for the men building the Dubh Artach lighthouse, on a reef far to the south-west, and from 1892 they also housed families of the keepers of Skerryvore light. Robert Louis Stevenson spent three weeks here in 1870, aged nineteen, training as an engineer in his father’s firm, and later stranded his character David Balfour here in Kidnapped, shipwrecked and washed up believing himself alone on a deserted island.
The lighthouse service left Erraid in 1952. From 1978 the cottages were home to a small community linked to the Findhorn Foundation; in 2025 that community became independent, registering its own charity to carry on the volunteering and short courses it offers visitors, and sheep are still grazed on the island. Erraid’s pink granite and white sand sit on the same stretch of coast as Iona and Mull, both a short way off.
