Global warming in Knoydart?

by - 12:40 on 24 July 2007

Remoteness is relative. Depending on where you are, you could say Scotland itself is remote. Arrive in Edinburgh and Mallaig in the West Highlands might seem some way further, even though it is a railhead and ferry port. Travel on to Mallaig and from there, as well as to Armadale on Skye on a car ferry, you can also go by passenger-only ferry to Inverie in Knoydart – a place with a definite reputation for remoteness.

At least, the Old Forge pub and restaurant in Inverie happily describes itself as the remotest pub in Britain.

However, park yourelf outside the pub with a pint of something refreshing and you look back up the channel, up Loch Nevis to the headland round which Mallaig sits, and you realise it isn’t remote at all. It’s about 40 minutes by the ferry ‘Western Isles' (Bruce Watt Cruises) – less by fast rib or any kind of speedboat. And in summer at least, it’s quite a busy place with yachts coming and going, and various vessels bringing in all the community supplies.

If it’s lunchtime, you may like to sit outside the pub and ask for a plate of mussels. I did - and got the reply that there would be a small delay as they had just got them out of the loch and had to beard them (in their lair, perhaps?) Anyway, how’s that for efficiency and negligible food miles? 

So there we sat, looking out to a glassy sea as the sun beat down on a day that thousands of people ‘down south’ in England had much more worrying preoccupations thanks to the worst flooding in living memory. We stayed in Knoydart – near one of the statistically wettest places in Scotland – for four days and had one morning only of slight drizzle. Here are the photos to prove it. There’s something very odd going on. 

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