Isle Martin sits at the mouth of Loch Broom, a short crossing from Ardmair, a few miles north of Ullapool. Community-owned since 1999, when the RSPB passed it on to a trust set up by the people of Loch Broom and Coigach, the island was earlier a working herring station before Ullapool itself existed, and from 1939 to 1948 a flour mill on the same site processed wheat shipped in by boat and sent flour out across the northern Highlands. A stone carved with an early Christian cross is evidence of a monastery here many centuries before that. The Isle Martin Trust runs a passenger ferry from Ardmair at weekends between May and October, and waymarked paths cross the island to its summit and round the shore; the old croft buildings are now bothy-style stays, booked through the trust. Nearby, the Summer Isles are often grouped with Isle Martin as part of the same scatter of islands off Coigach.
