Set in 20 acres of woodland garden just outside Portree, ‘relaxing’ Viewfield House has the look and feel of a much-loved family home.

You need to take a ferry crossing before traversing a mountain pass and a deep glen to arrive at this ‘superb country house in a remote and extraordinary setting’ with a private beach on a loch shore with mountain views.

With bookshop and bar, coffee shop, restaurant and events space, the Urquhart family’s hotel in a fishing village on Loch Broom hums with activity.

With views to take the breath away, this former hunting lodge owned by Lord and Lady Macdonald stands on the shores of Loch Na Dal at the foot of densely wooded Kinloch hill.

A private road leads to this singular Georgian mansion in lovely gardens and grounds, with ancient trees, a pitch-and-putt area, and a fairy trail through the rhododendrons for children.

Far-flung Torridon hosts an extreme Scottish triathlon, but there are gentler pursuits for guests at this resort hotel, a ‘baronial pile’ on a wooded estate at the head of Loch Torridon.

Eddrachilles Hotel is currently closed.

On the edge of the Cairngorms national park, William and Sonia Marshall’s bay-fronted Victorian house looks on to a tract of the ancient woodlands that surround Grantown-on-Spey.

Amid the wooded mountain scenery of the Cairngorms national park, a Victorian tweed mill once driven by the rocky, rushing Gynack Burn lives on as a restaurant-with-rooms.

On the shore of Loch Oich, this rambling baronial Victorian house has its own castle ruins in its extensive wooded grounds – Invergarry Castle is said to have hosted Bonnie Prince Charlie after the Battle of Culloden.

Ferries no longer skim across Loch Glendhu to Kylestrome, but you can still watch the day’s catch being landed on the slipway, from Tanja Lister and Sonia Virechauveix’s 17th-century coaching inn turned award-winning hotel.

In the remote north of Skye, a whitewashed stone crofter’s cottage overlooking Loch Dunvegan, with views to the peaks of Harris and North Uist, is home to an ambitious restaurant-with-rooms.

You can almost hear the skirling of pipes as you gaze across Loch Shiel from Jane MacFarlane’s waterside mansion to the Glenfinnan Monument and distant Ben Nevis.

‘Every visit exceeds expectations,’ writes a fan of Robert Bryson and Glen Russell’s restaurant-with-rooms in a village dubbed ‘the crossroads to the Highlands’.

Hens roam the landscaped gardens of this B&B, a stroll from a town set amid ancient woodlands on the edge of the Cairngorms national park.

The Campbell family’s old coaching inn has long been a mecca for fisherfolk, who come hoping to catch wild brown trout and salmon from the lochs and lochans around.

‘Friendly, thoughtful hosts’, ‘a comfortable bed’ and ‘delicious breakfasts’ add up to ‘a good stay’ at Kerensa and Michael Carr’s B&B, close to the cathedral and Royal Dornoch Golf Club.

At the head of Loch Shiel, ‘friendly, attentive’ hosts Ina and Kieron Kelly ably continue the tradition of this former coaching inn, where 17th-century travellers stopped in along the Road to the Isles.

‘The panorama of the sea’ is an attraction at this ‘good-value’ B&B on the Moray coast; the welcome, by ‘friendly, personable’ hosts John Bochel and Rachel Philipsen, is another.

Remote and romantic, Clare Winskill and Iain Roden’s peaceful restaurant-with-rooms is reached down a single-track road through wild croft land, past grazing sheep.

In landscaped gardens, overlooking the island’s main harbour town, this refurbished Edwardian country house has a coolly contemporary interior and views that stretch to the bay.

In a village on the Great Glen Way, hikers and cyclists stop for the simple comforts of this 160-year-old coaching inn.

Hotel grounds don’t get much more ‘exquisite’ than at Don and Wendy Matheson’s ‘beautiful if unadorned’ Georgian mansion, sitting amid 22 acres of lawns, meadows and woodland.

Muckrach Country House Hotel has closed. Surrounded by peaceful pastureland in the Cairngorms national park – a happy setting for the two resident long-horned bulls – the Cowap family’s restored Victorian shooting lodge is within reach of a host of Highland activities.

On a quiet residential street, John and Jane Martin’s good-value B&B is within a short walk, over the River Ness, of the centre.

Guests praise the ‘true hospitality’ at David Wilson’s loch-facing hotel, restaurant and modern art gallery, in a converted former manse, a stroll from the old fort walls.

The scenic, single-track Bealach na Ba winds and turns across the remote Applecross peninsula before it leads to Judith Fish’s unpretentious hostelry, where low-key charm and cheer spill on to the shoreside terrace.