What’s the Point of Ardnamurchan?

by - 23:44 on 24 March 2007

First of all, hand on heart, I can’t say I know anyone in Ardnamurchan. So that if coming upon an ordinary photograph taken a few years back – see below - suddenly made me think fondly about the area, then it must be to do with just how the place is.

This peninsula is always described in guidebooks as ending at the most westerly point in the UK mainland, marked on the Ordnance Survey maps as Point of Ardnamurchan, roughy translated as point of storms in the Gaelic – say it out loud and roll it around your mouth and it even sounds grumbly and stormy. (Technically, the most westerly chunk is called Corrachaidh Mor and lies just to the south of Ardnamurchan Point.) Though it is a peninsula, it might as well be an island. You can approach it by sea, via the Caledonian MacBrayne ferry that goes from Tobermory to Kilchoan, while your land route from the east, in its latter stages, winkles its way west from Salen, along the shores of Loch Sunart, in such a switchback way round the rhododendron-shrouded blind bends that you might as well be at sea. The car certainly pitches and rolls. But it really is worth the journey.

You might be in the vicinity of Fort William. Better still, you might take it into your head to visit as you look across Loch Linnhe to the inviting gap between the big hills of Ardgour which leads on to Glen Tarbert, Strontian, then Salen. (Best of all you might be gazing at a sunset over these hills from the dining room of the Holly Tree Hotel at Kentallen www.hollytreehotel.co.uk, where they serve the best ever squat lobsters, in which case life may feel for the moment complete.) No, mustn’t get distracted by seafood again.

Anyway, make that trip west, for a whole variety of reasons. Enjoy the birdsong in the oakwoods of Sunart. (I’m sure that must be the title of a fiddle tune.) Visit the fine and informative natural history centre at Glenmore. They are so integrated with the local wildlife that last time I was there, they had a pine marten using the place as its den. There it was, sound asleep – you could look at it through a special window. And it’s about as close as you’ll ever get to a real wild pine marten unless you’re very lucky.

Actually, the whole area is big on the unspoilt environment. Wander up to the Ariundle oakwoods – so green, mossy and other-worldly that you half-expect to meet a hobbit on an elf-guided walk. It seems to be a fact not often mentioned in guidebooks that this Atlantic woodland is actually older than the Caledonian pinewood which is usually exemplified as the great natural woodland of Scotland. However, all this greenery and wild nature has a price – and that’s the rainfall – obviously why it’s so green in the first place. www.snh.org.uk/nnr-scotland/reserve.asp

Anyway, onwards to the Point itself. It has a lighthouse which houses in its adjacent ancillary buildings a most informative exhibition. It even had a café nearby, housed in the old stable block. So, as you’ve come this far, it’s best to hang about for a bit, perhaps down by the old fog-horn, where you can work out which island is which out to the west. – especially the Small Isles, with the Sgurr of Eigg as an easy landmark – they’re all out there if the visibility is half-decent.



There are other places to discover, including this fine view to the north-west, taken not far from Kilmory. All around there’s a sense of wild ground, of somewhere not quite tamed. Somewhere that takes a little effort to get to know. Anyway, it certainly beats thrashing on up the Great Glen with the heavy lorries.

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