My first view of the distillery is across Loch Harport, as we wind around its grey waters. Devoted drinker Robert Louis Stevenson hailed this peaty single malt ‘the King o’ drinks’, and it embodies the very spirit of the island – attempt to mix it with anything other than springwater and you’ll be taking on the Gurkha for speed as you’re booted out the door.

I decide against the distillery tour (too many vats and figures) and press on to the nearby Stein Inn at Waternish, where an exceptional array of whiskies glints behind the bar – the perfect cockle-warmer as rain batters the windows. When it stops, I head south to Carbost and the black woodshed where Paul McGlynn runs Isle of Skye Oysters. Paul explains the need to minimise stress (theirs, not his!) in order to keep them at their best, then shucks a couple of beauties – fresh from the oyster beds just metres away – for me to slurp down.

There’s an old Scottish superstition that shellfish and whisky should never be mixed, but the smoky residue of Talisker and the silky saltiness of the oysters are sublime partners, and nothing untoward occurs as I carry on up the northern peninsula of Waternish. On the way, the sun finally breaks through, sending a rainbow hooping high over Loch Dunvegan. For much of the year cloud and mist provide a constant veil for the landscape, but when the sun does appear it pierces the air with dazzling intensity.

Light is as fluid on Skye as the Atlantic waters, shifting through the spectrum as it turns hillsides into a kaleidoscope of green, russet and purple. Grey ocean swells turn deep blue and the traditional white-painted houses (tigh geal in the Gaelic still spoken by many on the island) become gleaming beacons.

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There’s more colour at Lusta, where Judith MacLachlan’s tiny white-walled gallery perches above a rocky beach in the shadow of a headland across the inlet. Filled with head-turning sculptures and bright abstract canvases, it’s a neat contrast to the ramshackle sheds next door, where her daughter, Brigid, grows shiitake and other exotic fungi for appreciative island chefs.

It’s this loving embrace of new ingredients that makes the Skye experience so appealing. Purveyors of local fare might be rooted in the land of their fathers, but they’re happy to welcome exotic things to the party – be it homegrown pak choi or Madonna on table two at The Three Chimneys.

This unassuming restaurant is Skye’s shiny culinary pin-in-the-map. Located in a 100-year-old crofter’s cottage on the shores of Loch Dunvegan, the restaurant – with its rough, whitewashed walls and low-beamed, simple interior – feels more like a smugglers’ tavern than a stellar den with Michelin potential. Indeed, owner Shirley Spear and her crew say they don’t even recognise the famous faces who helicopter in frequently for scallops and highland solace. Only the Lamborghinis in the car park and Barbra Streisand eating carbs by candlelight give any visual hint that this place is something special. Until you try the food, that is.

In these days of food miles and sustainable farming, The Three Chimneys, like most Skye restaurants, ticks all the right boxes. The menu is plucked wriggling or rustling from the surrounding scenery. There’s no jus of pineapple or terrine of wild antelope here. Instead, shellfish and white fish from the cold, clear waters that surround the island; wild mallard, venison and Highland beef from the hills; mushrooms and salad vegetables in season from the windblown fields of local crofts, all tweaked into (greater) perfection by the steady hands of Shirley and her head chef Michael Smith.

If The Three Chimneys is the bashful Hebridean to London’s celeb-heavy Ivy, then at the opposite end of the spectrum – and the island – is Kinloch Lodge in Armadale, on Skye’s Sleat peninsula. Traditionally a MacDonald stronghold, the area’s known as the ‘Garden of Skye’: a softer, gentler experience than the growlingly fierce beauty of the north. Amid the bucolic beauty, the island’s other famous female gastronome, Lady Claire MacDonald, provides a richer fantasy, with the kind of atmosphere in her stately home-cum-restaurant that makes American tourists start reverently researching their tartan.

Her kitchen team, including Roux-trained chef Marcello Rully, performs a seduction on the tastebuds: saddle of rabbit with venison and prune stuffing, langoustine and organic salmon terrine. And while you’re digesting all that beneath the ancestral oil paintings, you can enjoy limpid views of Loch na Dal out of the window.

Before Lady Claire, the island’s most famous MacDonald was the Jacobite heroine Flora, who famously rowed Bonnie Prince Charlie, disguised as her maid, ‘over the sea to Skye’ in 1746. The Stuart prince was fleeing after defeat at Culloden, and Flora left him in Portree, where he tried to get change from a guinea to buy food, only to find the place so poor the whole town could raise only 13 shillings. Things are more prosperous here now, thanks to a gaggle of global visitors admiring the multicoloured houses along the quayside, or browsing organic island produce in shops like Vanilla Skye. Here, I try delicate handmade chocolates created using sturdy local ingredients such as toasted oatmeal, heather honey and, of course, Talisker.

Many of the restaurants in Portree might have persuaded Prince Charlie to break his guinea. Sitting in the aubergine-walled dining room of The Chandlery, I ponder over what to order for dinner. It could be langoustine (I’m sure I recognise a couple of them from a previous night’s encounter with a fisherman on the quay) or perhaps Loch Bracadale crab. In the end, I order a starter of Skye seafood soup, enriched with white fish and mussels from Loch Eishort, followed by wild venison sauced up with local berries.

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