Islands in ScotlandScotland

Tidal island off Cramond, reached along a causeway lined with wartime anti-boat pylons, with gun emplacements and views up the Forth

0.11 km² · Edinburgh

Island in the Forth with Scotland's best-preserved medieval abbey buildings, wartime gun batteries and a tunnel, grey seals and seabirds

0.12 km² · Fife

Puffin island at the mouth of the Forth, with medieval priory ruins, Scotland's oldest lighthouse beacon and a bird observatory

0.59 km² · Fife

North Isles island with Noltland Castle, Pierowall village, puffins at Castle o'Burrian and the RSPB seabird cliffs of Noup Head

48 km² · Orkney Islands

Fishing island with Symbister's harbour, a restored Hanseatic trading booth and Hugh MacDiarmid's former home at Sodom

19 km² · Shetland Islands

Flat machair island off North Uist's west coast, reached by causeway, with a long sandy beach facing the Atlantic

8.6 km² · Na h-Eileanan Siar

Low island at the top of the Uists, with a three-mile west beach, flower-rich machair and the ferry to Harris

11 km² · Na h-Eileanan Siar

Bridge-linked pair of islands south of Scalloway, with the fishing village of Hamnavoe, Meal and Minn beaches and the Kettla Ness walk

7.1 km² · Shetland Islands

Barrier-linked island with blockship wrecks, the dune beach at the fourth barrier, a fossil and heritage centre, and the causeway to Hunda

9.6 km² · Orkney Islands

Tidal island off Campbeltown with a Stevenson lighthouse and seven sea caves, one holding an 1887 painting of the Crucifixion

0.57 km² · Argyll and Bute

Car-free slate island of whitewashed cottages around flooded quarries, home of the World Stone Skimming Championships and a folk museum

0.29 km² · Argyll and Bute

Where Earl Magnus was killed in 1117, with a roofless round-towered church, a memorial on the spot and an RSPB reserve for waders

6 km² · Orkney Islands

Small island under the Skye Bridge where Gavin Maxwell spent his final months, with a Stevenson lighthouse and wildlife hide

Highland

Small island of Eriskay ponies and white beaches, where Bonnie Prince Charlie first landed in 1745 and the SS Politician ran aground

7.4 km² · Na h-Eileanan Siar

Tidal island off the Ross of Mull where Stevenson strands David Balfour in Kidnapped, with white sands and pink granite knolls

2.3 km² · Argyll and Bute

National Trust for Scotland island midway to Orkney, with a bird observatory for rare migrants, puffin cliffs and its own knitwear

8.1 km² · Shetland Islands

Small Scapa Flow island whose wartime trail passes gun batteries, the Stanger Head signal station and the Cletts sea stacks

9.3 km² · Orkney Islands

Remote island of great skuas and the Kame, among Britain's highest sea cliffs, where islanders still keep Yule on 6 January

13 km² · Shetland Islands

The 'Isles of the Sea', with early monastic beehive cells and a chapel on Eileach an Naoimh, traditionally founded by St Brendan

2.2 km² · Argyll and Bute

Remote farm island beyond Ulva, reached on foot by a long hill track, with views out to Staffa and the Treshnish Isles

4.6 km² · Argyll and Bute

Small farming island in Hoy Sound with two Stevenson lighthouses, a quiet road circuit and close views of Hoy's hills

3.9 km² · Orkney Islands

Causeway island between the Uists, with the shellfish harbour at Kallin, the Uist Wool mill and a boat museum

6.8 km² · Na h-Eileanan Siar

Farm island at the tip of the Tayvallich peninsula, reached by a short causeway, with shore walks looking out to Jura

3.2 km² · Argyll and Bute

Community-owned island off Ardmair, once a herring station and flour mill, with waymarked walks to the summit and bothy-style stays

1.6 km² · Highland

Westernmost Small Isle, run by the National Trust for Scotland, with Canna House's Gaelic archive, puffins on Sanday and a sheltered harbour

11 km² · Highland

Smallest of the Small Isles, a family-farmed island with a tearoom at Port Mòr, a sandy bay at Gallanach and seals offshore

5.2 km² · Highland

Cliff-bound island south of Barra, abandoned in 1912, with a ruined village above the bay and big seabird cliffs

6.3 km² · Na h-Eileanan Siar

Low machair islands west of North Uist, home to one of Britain's largest grey seal colonies each autumn

3.6 km² · Na h-Eileanan Siar

Home of Mousa Broch, the best-preserved Iron Age broch, where storm petrels return to nest in the walls on summer nights

1.8 km² · Shetland Islands

Seaweed-eating sheep kept to the shore by a stone dyke, the UK's tallest land-based lighthouse and a bird observatory for migrants

7.6 km² · Orkney Islands

National nature reserve whose 181-metre Noup cliffs hold thousands of nesting gannets, with puffins, great skuas and a summer visitor centre

3.3 km² · Shetland Islands

Tidal island reached across the Strand from Colonsay, with a 14th-century priory and carved crosses, and an RSPB farm for corncrakes

5.1 km² · Argyll and Bute

Shetland's most easterly community, three rocky islets round a sheltered harbour, good for migrant birds and Bound Skerry lighthouse

2.4 km² · Shetland Islands

Island of sea caves, arches and stacks, with a handful of residents and an excavated Norse farmhouse at Da Biggins

8 km² · Shetland Islands

Fishing island joined to Harris by bridge, with a moorland walk to Eilean Glas, the first lighthouse built in the Outer Hebrides

6.8 km² · Na h-Eileanan Siar

Abandoned crofting island off Hushinish, scene of a 1934 rocket-mail experiment, with sandy bays and views back to the Harris hills

11 km² · Na h-Eileanan Siar

Privately owned islands in the Minch with 120-metre dolerite columns and one of Britain's largest puffin colonies

1.7 km² · Na h-Eileanan Siar

Green isle joined to Bigton by a sand tombolo, with the ruined chapel where Pictish silver was found in 1958

0.87 km² · Shetland Islands

Pentland Firth island whose last families left in 1962, with an empty village, a lighthouse and the Swilkie tide race nearby

3.7 km² · Highland

Scatter of islands off Coigach, visited by boat for seals, seabirds and sea caves, with a short landing on Tanera Mòr

7.6 km² · Highland

Uninhabited since 1974 and the setting of the BBC's Castaway 2000, with white beaches, machair and ruined villages to walk between

14 km² · Na h-Eileanan Siar

Small crofting island between Scalloway and Burra, crossed by bridges, with quiet cycling roads and a rocky shore popular with kayakers

2.8 km² · Shetland Islands

Tidal island reached across the North Uist sands, with the ruined Edwardian mansion of archaeologist Erskine Beveridge and an old chapel site

2.6 km² · Na h-Eileanan Siar

Causeway island south of Barra with white beaches back to back across a neck of dunes, and the Annie Jane wreck memorial

9.4 km² · Na h-Eileanan Siar

Tiny island with Cubbie Roo's Castle, one of Scotland's oldest stone castles, a Norse-era chapel and Edwin Muir's childhood farm

3 km² · Orkney Islands

Largest of the Islands of Fleet, a low-tide walk from Carrick shore to the site of an early Christian chapel and graveyard

0.25 km² · Dumfries and Galloway

A ten-mile coast road to cycle, Millport's Victorian seafront and the Cathedral of the Isles, often called Britain's smallest cathedral

12 km² · North Ayrshire

Buddhist-owned island in Lamlash Bay, with a hill climb up Mullach Mòr, St Molaise's cave and free-roaming Eriskay ponies and Soay sheep

2.6 km² · North Ayrshire

Privately owned island south of Great Cumbrae with an early lighthouse site (1757), a 16th-century castle keep and a seal colony

2.8 km² · North Ayrshire

National Trust for Scotland bird sanctuary in the Urr estuary, a low-tide walk from Rockcliffe for oystercatchers, ringed plovers and views

Dumfries and Galloway