Day 248 – Shiel Bridge to Kyle of Lochalsh 14 miles 284′ of ascent

Tuesday 11th October 2022

Today was set to be a challenging day. Jill had set her heart on getting to Kyle of Lochalsh to finish this walking session and what will probably be our last session in Scotland for this year. To achieve this we had to pack up at the self-catering bungalow in Glenelg, drive one car to Kyle of Lochalsh and then return to Shiel Bridge and walk fourteen miles to Kyle of Lochalsh and then drive 300 miles, via Fort William to return the hire car, back to Cumbria.

We are pretty efficient at getting packed up and so we managed to get the cars parked and start walking by about 9.00; we hoped we could finish walking by 1.30. Today’s walk was to be entirely a road walk since the A87 runs along the coast the whole way. The A87 is a very fast road and especially at this time of the year when there are very few holiday-makers left to clog up the roads. The road becomes the preserve of locals and HGV drivers who know the road and take advantage of its graceful curves and straights and are not interested at gawping at the scenery, not that there was much to gawp at today.

We set off with high-vis tops on and our red warning lamps ready to use. Jill has a cycle rear-lamp and was using it on a strap on her arm and I have a head torch with a red light on the back.

Fortunately for most of the way there is a reasonable grassy verge next to the steel crash barrier and in some places there is a footpath. Even so, we did not feel entirely at our ease on the strip of grass between the crash barrier and the lorries thundering along at 60mph. The verge is quite un-even and is punctuated by gullies to take surface water off the road that can make the unwary walker take a tumble.

Because we had added a couple of miles into yesterday’s walk, we were actually starting from St. Dubhthac’s Church today. The first village we came to was Inverinate where there is a Jet filling station. As we passed, a voice called out and Mark, the walker we have crossed paths with twice before, was there filling up his car. It seemed odd that in a remote corner of Scotland we should cross paths with the same person three times over. Equally it must be true that, in a remote corner of Scotland where there are very few people, if you cross paths with anyone it is quite likely to someone with whom you have already crossed paths. Now that is a question for “More or Less”.

It was not actually raining most of the time but the air was damp and the cloud was right down so we could only see across the loch occasionally and so there was nothing to distract us from walking. We did keep our eye on the water’s edge just in case we should see an otter, but beside a busy, fast road did not seem to be otter heaven.

We came to Donnie, home of what I should think is the most photographed and most painted castle in Scotland. Eilean Donan is, of course, impressive sitting on a tiny island in Loch Duich and connected to the mainland by an eye-catching stone bridge. We wondered about getting a swift coffee at the visitor centre there. However, such is the tourist pull of the castle that as you approach you leave the delightful, low-key, anything goes, highlands and are rudely awakened by twenty-first century commercialism. The neatly-hedged parking area provides space for a large number of cars and coaches  for which they have to buy a parking ticket and even at 10.00 on a damp Tuesday in mid-October there was a security man directing traffic to appropriate parking slots. Foreign legions were descending from coaches and camper vans and making their way to the toilets, the tearoom and some even paying to going into the castle. Others lined the bank of the loch to get the classic photo of the castle.

As you will probably have guessed we wasted no time in moving on. Fortunately, just round the corner, we found a bus shelter with a proper level bench where we had coffee from our flasks and a piece of Jill’s fruit cake.

There is a causeway and bridge over the mouth of Loch Long (which incidentally is not very long at all and I guess its name derives from something else. The Gaelic “long” means ship and so that might be relevant) and on the other side we took the old road short cut through the village of Ardelve. This is closer to the sea but more importantly we had seen a sign to Manuela’s Wee Bakery and the thought of an almond croissant or some other delicacy was too much to resist. But resistance was futile or at least unnecessary because the Wee Bakery was closed due to Covid.

The next place we came to was Balmacara which is really an estate that extends all the way to the edge of Kyle of Lochalsh and comprises a number of small settlements. I had hoped to get a paper at the Spar shop but they were sold out of the Times.

On the shore of Lochalsh is the impressive Balmacara House, built around 1801, but now owned, along with the Balmacara Estate by the National Trust for Scotland who lease the house to the MOD who use it as a training base for divers.

The rain came and went but never went for long enough to justify taking off our waterproofs. As usual, we crossed the road every so often to walk along whichever side felt safer, with better chance of being seen or a wider, level verge to walk on. Most of the vehicles moved out to pass us but occasionally an HGV would thunder past at close quarters and create enough air movement to risk knocking us off balance.

Soon after Balmacara, Kyle of Localsh came into our view along with the Skye Bridge which fired us up to get to the end.

Having reached Kyle of Lochalsh, we drove back to the excellent café at Balmacara Square before collecting the Subaru from Shiel Bridge and heading for Fort William. Having left the hire car there, we were driving together, for a change, through the highlands. We made it to Moffat by 20.10 where I had booked a table for us at the Star Hotel. We eventually got back to Cumbria at about 22.15.

We were tired but also felt very pleased and satisfied to have completed this section of the walk in spite of so many difficulties: logistical, meteorological and physical. The sometimes pathless and difficult off-road terrain made for slower going at times but in spite of this we still seem to maintain a predictably good average speed which should help when I start planning how to schedule the rest of our walk.