Wednesday 7th September 2022
Today is a relatively short walk of about eleven miles to the road end to set us up for tomorrow. We took the cars to Drimnin and left one car near the slipway and drove back to Lochaline to start the walk.
We walked down to shore and the harbour where a couple of lorries were off-loading stacks of timber onto the quayside with their grabs, whilst a ship was using its grab to load the logs into the hold. It seemed to happen quite quickly. We were actually on the old road which lorries use to bring timber to the quay thus avoiding going through the residential part of the village. We followed it up to the main road and headed in the direction of Drimnin.
The road is very quiet and so there was not to much verge-hopping required. We had delightful views over the Sound of Mull to Mull itself and could see the airstrip and the village of Salen where we stayed when we cycled from Land’s End to John o’ Groats in 2009.
Roughly halfway along our walk, we came to the “Wishing Stone” which is a tall, slender spur of rock extending almost to the road. There is large hole through it giving it appearance of a flying buttress.
The base of the hole is about four feet above the ground. It is said that if you can climb through the hole without using hands or touching the sides and holding in a mouthful of water, your wish will be granted. There are a couple of footholds on one side and so I managed to climb up without using my hands and balanced my way through but on the other side there is just a drop of four or five feet. I didn’t fancy jumping for fear of injury and wrecking our walk. So I managed to sit myself onto the edge and shuffle forwards all without hands and then launch forwards and landed on my feet. Well, my wish won’t come true because I forgot about the mouthful of water.
After our coffee and that silly escapade, we continued on our way. Shortly before the road end, a track turns off to the Drimnin Estate and the road turns down to the little slipway where, in pre-Covid days, a passenger ferry used to cross to Mull.
We had lunch sitting on the rocks by the slipway enjoying the view over the Sound of Mull.
Having finished very early we took the opportunity to go Alan Hayman’s gallery which is a mile and a half along the track to the Drimnin Distillery. Unfortunately, perhaps, the track has been resurfaced/repaired with some very coarse granite stone which made for very unpleasant driving and I hope did not do too much damage to our tyres.
Most of his pictures are of West Coast views but usually there will be a beautifully painted bird somewhere in the view but not actually the subject of the picture. It gives the pictures a very natural feel. We bought a couple of prints for our bedroom in Yorkshire.
Alan was away at a different gallery but his wife asked if we would like to see inside his studio. Having taught himself taxidermy at a young age, the walls of the studio were adorned with a huge variety of stuffed animals and birds which provide the detail for some of his paintings.
Then we drove both cars to Kinlochteacuis and left the old Volvo there ready for the end of tomorrow’s walk. Jill managed to get her car off the road right by where we would join it; the only formal car park is a couple of miles up the road at a forestry site for an old township up in the hills and there were few other places where we could park on the verge.
Just Coasting 