Ten minutes’ drive from the ferry, Anne Gracie’s whitewashed hotel has ‘fine views’ across the Sound of Sleat. Fine, too, is the contemporary update the 1930s house has been given: a ‘lovely little drawing room’, with baby grand piano and marble fireplace, is ‘stylishly furnished’; in the ‘smartly decorated restaurant’, tables are laid with white linens for dinner. (Sister Skye hotels in Skeabost Bridge and further up along the Sleat peninsula – see main and Shortlist entries – share the same ‘boutique hotel’ predilection.) ‘Comfy modern bedrooms’, each named after a Scottish island, look on to the hillside or across the water; one of the best, ‘generously sized’, has a bay window for taking in the sea views. At mealtimes, the menus reflect the abundance of island produce from land and sea, including herbs and edible flowers from the hotel’s garden and polytunnels. Typical offerings: line-caught sea bass, samphire, braised fennel; pork loin, Stornoway black pudding, golden beetroot purée, purple carrots. Spend a day sailing aboard the 50-foot yacht skippered by Ken Gunn; return for a malt whisky by the log fire. More reports, please.