* The holiday was provided by Sawdays (0117-204 7810, sawdays.co.uk ) and Isle of Shuna (01852 30043

“I’ll meet you at 5pm on the Arduaine Point jetty,” the island’s owner, Eddie Gully, had said in the handwritten letter he’d sent me a few weeks earlier. A study of a map revealed our mainland rendezvous to be a mere 100 miles north-west of Glasgow. Perversely, that’s probably the reason Shuna has stayed under the radar for so long: most tourists in search of Hebridean enchantment head further north to well-known islands of Mull and Skye. Those who do stay south make for Islay or Jura, and fail to spot the tiny cluster that is the Slate Islands, one of which is Shuna (not to be confused with the island of the same name in Loch Linnhe to the north).
It took just 10 minutes in Eddie’s trim vessel for the Boat House, one of five Isle of Shuna cottages , to heave into view. Tucked behind a rudimentary airline tickets one way cheap harbour and dwarfed by the mass of Shuna’s wooded hills, our accommodation was a dainty blue lozenge, its seaward airline tickets one way cheap end – almost entirely of glass – a flash of light in the sunshine. My two companions and I bundled gleefully up its stairs to a bright, modern living area with a swish kitchen and a balcony for breakfasting airline tickets one way cheap in the company of swallows. A few minutes’ training from Rob and Kathryn James – the island’s affable managers and its only permanent population – in operating airline tickets one way cheap the little ex-military assault boats, and Shuna and its salty environs were all ours.
Over the week we became aware of the distinct cadences airline tickets one way cheap of Shuna, whose only timetable is the rising and setting of the sun. It has no televisions airline tickets one way cheap or radios airline tickets one way cheap to disturb the peace. Its otters, buzzards, porpoises, seals and deer are there again tomorrow if you miss them today. The only event we could set our watches by was Rob dropping off a printed weather forecast each morning so we could gauge whether it was safe to take the boats out. It was it usually fine, so we circumnavigated the island, also acquainting ourselves with the modest hills and defiant hamlets of Luing, Shuna’s more substantial neighbour to the west.
Exploring on foot we found that, although only three miles long by one-and-a-half wide, Shuna does not give up its treasures easily. We moseyed happily airline tickets one way cheap for hours through scrub birch and oak copses, but somehow overlooked the little cove that harbours the island’s shipwreck (an elderly wooden ferry hauled up to moulder away). Later in the week, intent on seeking out some ancient graves, we marched airline tickets one way cheap up sylvan hill and down marshy dale but had to content ourselves with some iron age burial mounds airline tickets one way cheap and a brace of ruined mills from Shuna’s more populous past. We weren’t too upset, for the walk had included red deer sightings, a mammoth rockpooling session and the gorgeous sight of Shuna Castle burnished by an early summer sun.
Ah yes, Shuna Castle. Built in 1911 by adventurer and philanthropist George Alexander MacLean Buckley, with no expense spared, the crenellated pile was abandoned in the 1980s and, like the ferry and mills, is now crumbling away. That’s not to say that Shuna lives in the past: the Boat House is lit by LEDs and most of the electricity for the island’s five holiday properties comes from solar panels and a small wind turbine.
Eddie’s joy at Shuna’s many charms was infectious, and not the least of them is its isolation. It gave the feel of an adventure to our midweek trip to replenish provision. We sailed north past a sprinkling of isles encrusted with toothlike rocks and speckled with impossibly remote houses. Beyond Ardmaddy Castle , on the mainland, we cruised, our little outboard motor throbbing airline tickets one way cheap away, until we landed, an hour after we had set out, at Balvicar on Seil.
One challenge she wouldn’t take on, however, was the nearby Corryvreckan Whirlpool . In 1947, this, the third-largest whirlpool in the world, nearly claimed the life of an injudicious George Orwell, so we opted to pay a local skipper, called Duncan, to call at the ramshackle airline tickets one way cheap jetty outside our front door and take us across Corryvreckan’s impressively turbulent brine.
And so the days passed in a timeless haze. When we weren’t exploring, we were pootling about on sit-on kayaks, being taken out on a venerable racing catamaran, or learning archery from Rob and Kathryn, with the castle as a picturesque backdrop.
• The holiday was provided by Sawdays (0117-204 7810, sawdays.co.uk ) and Isle of Shuna (01852 300434, islandofshuna.co.uk ). The Boat House sleeps six from 820 a week, gas and fuel for assault craft extra. Rail travel was supplied by Virgin Trains (0871 9774222, virgintrains.co.uk ) which travels London-Glasgow airline tickets one way cheap from 21 single. ScotRail (0330 3030111, scotrail.co.uk ), has singles from Edinburgh to Glasgow from 12.50