Sunday 11th September 2022
We caught the ferry from Mallaig to Inverie arriving at 9.30. On weekdays there is a 7.00 ferry which would have given us more time for the walk which is quite strenuous and we were carrying more gear than usual.
I had great anxiety about this walk having tacked it on to the end our September walking session especially as we were now doing it on a Sunday with the much later start. I was not quite as prepared as I would have liked but we had basic safety equipment including a two-man emergency shelter. Jill had suggested we get a satellite emergency beacon but we were doing this session at short notice so I had not got round to that.
The walk takes us through Knoydart, often regarded as the last wilderness area of Scotland; Knoydart has no road access. The only village on the peninsula is Inverie which is serviced entirely by boats. There is a shop, a hotel and bunkhouse and some other accommodation. The peninsula is famed for its remoteness and inaccessibility which perversely makes it attractive to people who like to visit such remote places. We actually met more people on this walk than on some of our other recent walks and the paths we followed were well used and easy to follow. We were carrying overnight gear and staying at the only B&B on our two day walk-through. The B&B is at Kinloch Hourn which is twenty-two miles down a single track, dead-end road. It is reputed to be the longest dead-end road in the UK. The nearest shop and village is Invergarry, 27 miles away. Not surprisingly it is not the cheapest B&B we have come across, but it is good value.
There were only six of us on the ferry. We were delighted when the ferry was escorted by a dolphin. It is amazing how fast dolphin can swim.
We disembarked at Inverie; two of the passengers in running gear disappeared running whilst Jill, I and a German tourist set off along the road. The other person disappeared I know not where.
The German was going as far as the Brocket monument. We walked with him a short distance and had some interesting conversation. He was a regular visitor to the small isles and was visiting Inverie on his way home. He has learned that it is safer to get back to the mainland a day early rather than risk being stranded by bad weather on one of the small isles with nowhere to stay and miss a flight home.
There is a short length of tarmac road through the village but we soon turned off to follow the track into the hills. Quite soon the Brocket Memorial came into view. Apparently the second Lord Brocket built it to the memory of his parents and family. It is said that he was a terrible landlord and was also a Nazi sympathiser. So no love lost there. The memorial is very prominent if not especially elegant.
The path climbs gently to Loch an Dubhlochain where the vehicle track ends and a possible Land Rover track continues a bit further.
The views were opening up and we could see into the various glens leading off the Loch. We paused for coffee and flapjack at the far end of the Loch. We had planned a schedule for this walk to make sure we got through to Kinloch Hourn well before the light would be failing and at this point we seemed to be half an hour ahead of schedule – but the serious climb was about to begin.
Our path was easy to follow but was now just a stalkers’ path. It ascended more steeply and there were a number of burns to cross. Though easily followed, the path was slippery in places and had some loose stone which meant we had to look where we were putting our feet more than at the views around us.
Mostly there were wooden bridges or stepping stone fords which made crossing quite simple.
We came to one burn where the bridge was completely missing. We knew from reading other blogs that one bridge was missing several slats and needed great care; clearly in the intervening time the bridge had disappeared completely.
I hope someone removed it before it collapsed or it got washed away in a storm and not that it collapsed beneath some unfortunate walker. Anyway since the burn was not in spate it wasn’t too difficult to get down to it and cross by means of some boulders.
Soon we came to the pass at Mam Barrisdale. (Mam, roughly means a hill) Here we had great views all around us. There was only light cloud and we had intermittent sun and we felt quite warm from all the climbing.
I had warned Jill that the path down would be steeper and more difficult especially if there was a lot of loose stone as on the earlier part of the ascent. In fact it was much easier than the ascent having a good firm base and it was generally dry.
We were down at Barrisdale by 13.15 which was well ahead of our anticipated pace. As we approached we could see quite a large solar panel installation. The settlement at Barrisdale seems to comprise a gamekeeper’s cottage and another house that was unoccupied; it was difficult to know whether it was a permanent residence or for letting.
There is “The White House”, a detached house a few hundred yards up the river which is let as self-catering accommodation and there is “The Stables” also self-catering adjoined to the bothy.
The bothy itself charges £5 a night and has running water from a kitchen tap, a flush toilet and electricity and so, as bothies go, that is pretty good and worth £5 given how remote it is. We looked in as we passed through. There were four rucksacks in the two bunk rooms but none were unpacked and no one appeared to have claimed a bunk yet. Outside there is a camping area though there was no evidence of recent camping that I could see.
We walked on a little and found some rocks to sit on overlooking the bay, ate our sandwiches and had a good rest.
The section from Barrisdale to Kinloch Hourn is notorious for being slow even though it appears to be along the loch-side; we knew that other walkers had taken three to four hours on this section. We had notionally aimed to start this section by 2pm but accepted that if we did not start it until 3pm we would probably just be in time for supper at Lochhournhead at 7pm.
As predicted, the final six miles of the walk were arduous. Though notionally along the loch-side, the path winds left and right, up and down over a whole variety of surfaces. Jill certainly hadn’t “logged” how challenging this stretch would be, even though she recalled one of the earlier coast walkers saying he regarded it as a “Rite of Passage” for all serious hillwalkers. At no time could we establish a walking rhythm. The views over Loch Hourn were good and the afternoon remained dry and rather warm. About halfway along, we met three heavily-laden young men heading for the bothy at Barrisdale for the night. They appeared to be struggling and Jill overheard one of them quipping that no doubt the path would become just like heading down the M6 once they had rounded the next outcrop. They asked us what was ahead of them and Cliff told them that it “certainly goes up and down a bit”. We took loads of photos, for our record more than anything else but it is a fine walk.
Skiary, Runival and Barrisdale were just a few of the long list of settlements cleared by Josephine MacDonnell in 1853 – over 400 people were evicted in some of the worst acts of the Clearances; their homes were burned and the people were forced on to transport ships. It is poignant to think that what is now very much a wilderness, once supported hundreds of people only 150 years ago.
We eventually came to Kinloch Hourn a few minutes after 17.00 and so we had achieved the walk from Barrisdale in a little over three hours which matched the time taken by some of the fitter coast walkers and rather faster than many other walkers; our host at Lochhournhead referred to it being a four hour walk. (Though I must admit that Jill had been reduced to tears at one low point of fatigue.) There were three or four cars in the car park at the loch head and a couple of paddle boarders were coming into land; obviously the twenty-two mile drive does not put off visitors completely.
We were welcomed at Lochhournhead with tea and cake and shortly afterwards a solo walker arrived for similar sustenance and asked about camping. We chatted for a while about our respective experiences. He was having an unplanned wander through the highlands whilst his wife had gone to Croatia with her sisters.
We were the only people staying that night in what is the only accommodation available, other than camping or staying in the bothy 6 miles back at Barrisdale. When I tried to book up for our trip in October, the web page had changed and when I rang, I was told that for unforeseen reasons Lochhournhead would not be open then and that this was the last week it would be open this year. We considered all the possible ways we might still be able to do the walk from Inverie through to Corran but Jill did not think she would cope on that terrain with carrying the gear necessary for either camping or the bothy so we made the decision to cross Knoydart in September instead.
We dined chatting to Tony Hind who was acting as host. Tony used to run Lochhournhead but retired about three years ago. He had returned to look after the place whilst the new proprietors, Vicky and Iain, were on holiday. Tony had experienced all sorts of walkers in his time as proprietor; he had seen several over-enthusiastic younger walkers who were just unprepared for the rigours of the trail, those who were poorly equipped and had not prepared for emergencies, a man who needed an ambulance when he fell ill and a man whose body was eventually recovered by helicopter from a nearby summit. Tony was most concerned by the walkers in their sixties and seventies who, though experienced in their younger years, sometimes failed to allow for their increasing slowness and lack of endurance as they aged. Jill laughed at that but he assured us he thought we were well-prepared and sensible. Well, I hope we had been adequately cautious.
Then Tony told us of the people who leave kit behind. As it turned out, a couple of days before, a group of Australians had gone through and left some of their travel documents there. Another walker going through had taken the documents on for them. However, when Tony was checking under a bed he found they had also left their camping stove. He asked if we might be able to take it with us since we would be going past Kintail Lodge at Shiel Bridge the next day. We were happy to oblige.
Just Coasting 