- a magnet for film-makers - Powel and Pressburger country, a soap opera for small children and the Python team again

Make your way west on the Oban road towards Loch Awe and you can enjoy the views of Ben Cruachan and also see Kilchurn Castle. And if you watch To Catch a Spy (1971), called Catch Me a Spy in the USA, then you'll see Kilchurn Castle again, just behind Kirk Douglas's head. He's in a boat at this point, fishing, along with the French lead Marlene Jobert. The film also features Tom Courtenay. No doubt about it, this area has seen some big names on location. It even had Bette Davis in the 1972 movie Madame Sin. (She was trying to steal a nuclear submarine, apparently.)

Then take Michael Powel and Emeric Pressburger, directors whose reputations are linked with some classic films. Powel, in particular, loved the western seaboard of Scotland and had always wanted to make a film about a girl trying to reach an island. This became the hugely successful I Know Where I'm Going (1945), which still has a kind of cult following in which it is always known to its fans as IKWIG.

The film crew made their base at the House of Carsaig on Mull and the nearby jetty appears in the film. Both Duart Castle and Torosay Castle also feature. The Western Isles Hotel in Tobermory has memorabilia of the film on display as it was used as a location, while the Corryvreckan whirlpool has an important role in the plot. The star was Wendy Hiller and the huge cast list includes the then successful child-actress Petula Clark, as well as familiar Scottish faces of film industry - for example, John Laurie and Finlay Currie. The outside filming took five weeks and a fire engine had to be hired to provide rain!

The thriller writer Alastair MacLean wrote the book and the screen play When Eight Bells Toll (1971) - another production featuring Mull, including Tobermory (and an ironmonger's shop there) as well as Duart Castle, which certainly has had its share of film crews. This prominent fortress on the Sound of Mull also appears in Entrapment (1999) with Catherine Zeta-Jones as an insurance investigator and Sean Connery as an art thief. As it happened, around the same time, Calgary Bay was also featured in Kidnapped (1971), the version with Michael Caine in the title role, as was Seil Island, south of Oban. Walt Disney's Kidnapped from 1960 had Peter Finch in the lead and some scenes were filmed in Appin.

These days, Mull and Tobermory in particular, are most strongly associated with the hugely successful children's TV series Balamory, sometimes described as a pre-school soap opera. Along with the colourfully-painted houses which group round the harbour as a backdrop, the series features a cast of larger than life characters including Spencer the painter, Miss Hoolie the schoolteacher, Archie the inventor, Josie Jump the fitness instructor and local policeman PC Plum.

Mull's little neighbour Staffa with its curious rock formations has attracted more than one bizarre moment on film. A flare is fired from a helicopter into Fingal's Cave on the island during When Eight Bells Toll. (Hope they told the National Trust for Scotland first!) Explore the themes of the Scottish film-maker Murray Grigor's Scotch Myths (1982) and you'll see a Liberace-like figure playing a white grand piano on the rocks with the tide rising around him. Appropriately enough, he's playing Mendelssohn's Hebridean Overture. Finally, the puzzling, art-installation (or otherwise unclassifiable) film Cremaster 3 (2002) also features Staffa at one point.

Back on the mainland, those Python people pop up again, with a starring role for Castle Stalker in Appin towards the end of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. To the south, the ferry gateway and resort town of Oban has also had its share of film crews. The gentle comedy Bridal Path (1959), based on Nigel Tranter's novel about a young islander heading to the mainland to seek a bride, features the young Bill Travers as Ewan MacEwan. At one point in the film he is served in an Oban café by Annette Crosby, much later the long suffering wife of Victor Meldrew. Loch Creran and Castle Stalker appear in the background of other scenes, with the old Bridge at Bridge of Awe near Taynuilt also featuring.

Bill Travers was back in Oban for scenes from Ring of Bright Water (1969), where he buys fish for his otter on the pier. Seil island is also conspicuous in this film, including village scenes set amongst the picturesque cottages of Ellenabeich. In 1981, the wartime spy thriller Eye of the Needle (1981) also uses locations around Oban (and Mull). The Connel Bridge, for example, is instantly recognisable. Finally for Oban, the town is also a backdrop to scenes in Morvern Callar (2002).