An Islay Long Weekend: One Course, Nine Distilleries, the Ferry

The first time you fly into Islay you understand the trip in five minutes. The plane is a small Saab 340 from Glasgow; the run is thirty-five minutes; you descend over Loch Indaal with the village of Bowmore visible to your left and the runway laid down on a peat moor to the right. The pilot announces that you are now on Islay. Half the people on board are coming for the whisky. The other half are coming for the same whisky, but pretending it is for the birds, the beaches, or — in my case — the golf.

I have been on this island a dozen times. The first six trips were entirely whisky-led — long weekends arranged around the Feis Ile festival in May, or around a single distillery's special bottling release in autumn. The last six have all included a round of golf at The Machrie, and the trip has improved each time. There is something about playing eighteen holes in the morning that makes the afternoon's tasting more honest. You drink less. You taste more. You go to bed earlier.

This is not a tasting tour. There are excellent ones written by people who know far more about whisky than I do. This is a four-day itinerary for a small group of golfers who would also like to drink some of the world's best whisky in the place it is made — and to do both without ruining either.

On getting there

There are two routes onto Islay. The Loganair flight from Glasgow to Islay Airport (PA42 7AS, postcode for the satnav, near Port Ellen) takes 35 minutes and costs around £150 return in shoulder season. The CalMac ferry from Kennacraig in Argyll takes two hours fifteen minutes and costs around £100 return for a car and two passengers. The flight is the right answer for the long weekend; the ferry is the right answer if you want the slow Hebridean approach and don't mind the four-hour drive to Kennacraig from Glasgow.

If the trip is golf-led, fly. The clubs go in the hold for £15 each way. There are no hire bags on the island; bring your own.

If the trip is whisky-led and you intend to bring back more than a few bottles, take the ferry. Islay distillery shops carry exclusive bottlings you can only buy on the island, and the customs limit on the ferry is generously interpreted.

The accommodation question

Islay is small. There are three obvious bases:

• Bowmore, in the middle of the island, which is the closest village to the airport and the most central for distillery driving. The Bowmore Hotel and the Lambeth House are the two visitor-priced options.
• Port Ellen, on the south coast, which puts you within walking distance of three distilleries (Lagavulin, Laphroaig, Ardbeg) and a 15-minute drive from The Machrie. The Islay Hotel is comfortable.
• Port Charlotte, on the western Rinns peninsula, which puts you next to Bruichladdich and Kilchoman. The Port Charlotte Hotel is the sort of small Highland hotel that is increasingly rare — wood fires, twenty bedrooms, dinner served until 9pm.

For a four-day trip with one round of golf, base in Port Ellen. The course is fifteen minutes away. Three of the heavyweight distilleries are within walking distance. The afternoons that don't involve driving are the days you'll remember.

Day one — arrival, an evening at Bowmore

Land at Islay Airport mid-afternoon. Pick up the hire car (Avis Islay, in a small office at the airport — book ahead; there are about thirty cars on the island). Drive ten minutes north to Bowmore.

Walk to Bowmore Distillery. It is the oldest licensed distillery on Islay (founded 1779) and the only one with its own seafront warehouse — the No. 1 Vaults, where the casks rest below sea level. Tours run on the hour through the afternoon. The 12-year-old is the entry; the 15 Sherry Cask is the value. The 25 is what you drink at the bar afterwards if you have just sold a business.

Dinner at the Harbour Inn, on the seafront. Local langoustines. A glass of the 18-year-old that Bowmore released for its 250th anniversary in 2029.

Day two — the Kildalton Three

This is the day everyone comes to Islay for. Three distilleries — Laphroaig, Lagavulin, Ardbeg — within a mile of each other on the southern coast, all peated, all distinct, all best visited in this order.

Leave Bowmore at 9.30am. Drive to Port Ellen (20 minutes). Park at the Islay Hotel and walk.

10am: Laphroaig. The 10-minute walk west of Port Ellen along the coast is the right way to arrive. The Laphroaig 10-year-old is the malt some people will tell you is undrinkable — medicinal, peaty, smoky, divisive. The standard tour ends with a tasting of the 10 and the Quarter Cask; the Friends of Laphroaig walking tour ends with a tasting of the cask-strength bottlings in the warehouse and is much better. Pre-book.

12.30pm: Lagavulin. The next bay east. The 16-year-old is the Islay malt non-Islay-specialists most often own. The distillery sits in a sheltered bay and the visitor experience is the most polished of the three; the Distillers Editions and the Special Releases are the bottles to try if you can.

Lunch: Solan Goose Cafe in Lagavulin village. Open until 4pm. Soup and a sandwich. You'll need them.

2.30pm: Ardbeg. Ten minutes' walk east of Lagavulin. The Old Kiln Café here is one of the better pubs on the island, and the distillery shop carries Ardbeg Day bottlings (released annually on the first Saturday of June) that sell out within hours of release. The Uigeadail and Corryvreckan are the modern Ardbeg reference points; the cask-strength single-cask bottlings are the warehouse-tour reward.

Walk back to the car. Drive 20 minutes back to Port Ellen via the Carraig Fhada lighthouse, on the headland west of town. The lighthouse is white, square, unusual — built in 1832 in memory of the founder's late wife. A 10-minute walk down to the lighthouse and the beach beyond is the right way to clear your palate.

Dinner at the Islay Hotel.

Day three — the round at The Machrie

This is the golf day. The Machrie is the only course on Islay. It was originally laid out by Willie Campbell in 1891 (one of the older links in Scotland) and was comprehensively redesigned by DJ Russell, working with David Howell, between 2014 and 2017. The current layout keeps several Campbell holes — including the famously blind 7th — but rebuilt greens and rerouted others to make the round more strategic.

Tee off 10.30am. The course runs alongside Laggan Bay; seven miles of empty beach as the eastern boundary; views to Northern Ireland on a clear day. Three and a half hours for a quick round, four and a half if you are taking your time. Visitor green fee £105–£135 depending on season.

The clubhouse is the Machrie Hotel — a destination in its own right, redesigned at the same time as the course. Lunch in the bar. The whisky list is appropriately serious for the location.

Afternoon distillery (optional): Bowmore (revisit). If you skipped a Bowmore tour on day one, do it now. If not, the right answer is to drive west across the island to Bruichladdich (40 minutes from The Machrie), spend an hour in the distillery shop, and then walk five minutes along the loch to Port Charlotte Hotel for an early dinner. Bruichladdich's unpeated malt is the contrarian choice on Islay — the house that breaks every Islay convention deliberately. Whether you like it or not (the Octomore, with its 80+ ppm peating level, is the bottling that most divides Islay drinkers), the distillery itself is worth the visit for the principled stubbornness alone.

Drive back to Port Ellen for the night.

Day four — Kilchoman, departure, ferry

Morning: Kilchoman. 40 minutes north-west of Port Ellen, on the Atlantic side of the Rinns. The youngest of Islay's working distilleries (founded 2005) and the only one that grows, malts, distils, matures and bottles all on the same farm. The Machir Bay is the entry; the Sanaig and Loch Gorm are the bottles whisky-leaning visitors will recognise. Tour is short and good.

11am: drive to airport. Or to the ferry terminal at Port Ellen if you came by sea.

Lunch: Solan Goose, again, if you have time. Or the airport café.

1.30pm flight to Glasgow. Or the 1pm ferry from Port Ellen.

The bottles you bought at Bowmore, Bruichladdich and Kilchoman are in the suitcase. The cask-strength sample from the Laphroaig warehouse tour is in the hand luggage. Bring the receipts in case anyone asks. They won't.

Total budget

Item	Cost
Loganair return (Glasgow to Islay)	£150
Hire car, four days	£180
The Machrie green fee	£125
Five distillery tours (average £18)	£90
Three nights Islay Hotel, B&B	£450
Per-person total (two sharing)	~£600

Bottles bought to take home are entirely your problem. Budget £200 per bottle for the warehouse-tour single casks; £40–£80 for the standard distillery-shop bottlings; £150–£250 for the bigger Macallan and Lagavulin special releases if you find them. The Kilchoman shop usually has Sanaig at £45 and Loch Gorm 5-year-old at £55 — the best-value bottles on the island.

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What I won't tell you

I won't tell you the Kildalton Three are the best three distilleries on Islay. They are the most famous; that is different. After fifteen years of regular visits the distillery I most want to drink at is Bunnahabhain, on the north-east coast of the island — a 50-minute drive from Port Ellen, often overlooked because it is the longest drive and produces (predominantly) unpeated malts that don't fit the standard Islay-equals-peat narrative. The Bunnahabhain 12-year-old is one of the great underrated Scottish single malts. The Eirigh na Greine — Gaelic for "rising of the sun" — is a beautiful thing.

I won't tell you the round at The Machrie is essential to a whisky trip. It isn't. If your group has no golfers, leave the clubs at home and use the day for either Bunnahabhain (north-east) or Caol Ila (which sits on the Sound of Islay with views to Jura — and produces the smoky backbone of Johnnie Walker Black Label, despite being rarely encountered as a bottling itself).

What I will tell you is that the morning round, if you have golfers in the group, makes the rest of the trip better. The two activities pace each other. You drink less because you walked. You sleep better because you played. The Hebridean evening — long, slow, with the firth turning silver toward Jura — is the best context in which to drink any of the malts I've named here.

A four-day Islay weekend is a small thing in the scale of a year. It is one of the few small things that consistently delivers what it promises. Book it.