The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Magical Moidart memories as I walked in the footsteps of our Young Pretender
On our arrival at Dalilea Farm on the north shore of Loch Shiel, Moidart, we were greeted with: “Please slow down. Free range children and animals.” The doyenne and I are back from a 10-day break in one of our favourite parts of Scotland.
Three-storey Dalilea House, with its pepperpot towers dating back to the 15th Century, sits four-square among centuries-old sycamores and oak trees.
One immensely tall sycamore, in particular, is beautifully proportioned. If it wasn’t planted by Bonnie Prince Charlie, it certainly should have been. I’ve known Dalilea from family holidays when I was a teenager. The farm is still run by the Macaulay family – third generation John and Izzy, and likely a fourth generation among their four youngsters.
The farm has its own water supply, taken straight from the Highland burn that brawls its way down to the loch. You’ve not to mind brushing your teeth in brown, peaty water tasting quite different from the treated supply from Scottish Water which comes out of our taps here at home.
Moidart is Bonnie Prince Charlie country and reeks of Jacobite history. On July 25 1745, the Young Pretender, with seven companions known as the Seven Men of Moidart, landed just up the coast at Loch Nan Uamh and began his ill-fated adventure to recover the British throne for the House of Stuart. The prince marched to Dalilea and was rowed to Glenfinnan at the head of the loch where he raised his standard and rallied the Highland clans.
Seventeen-miles long from Acharacle at the foot to Glenfinnan at the head, Loch Shiel is one of Scotland’s longest lochs. It’s a true wilderness area where distances are measured as the crow – or more properly, the hoodie crow – flies, for few roads run along its shores. The benefit is that the wildlife lives relatively undisturbed from direct human contact.
There’s a sporting chance of seeing golden eagles and sea eagles, buzzards, otters and red deer. A Sika appeared at the farm one morning, grazing amongst the cattle. It’s been turning up for the past three years and no-one knows where it comes from as there aren’t any others known about locally. In the summer months you may be lucky enough to see migrant ospreys and black-throated divers which come to breed by our northern lochs.
It’s a place of light and views, of scent on the air, of atmosphere and the changing mood of the landscape. Towering above everything is the massif of Beinn Resipol, a Corbett at 2,775ft straddling Loch Shiel
and Loch Sunart, a viewpoint for the whole of the Ardnamurchan peninsula.
It’s a tremendous year for rowans in the Highlands. Wherever we drove, we saw tree after tree dripping with the scarlet berries. If I hadn’t picked good berries in Glenesk before we went away, we’d certainly have come home with some for the doyenne’s rowan-and-apple jelly – ever so good with roast lamb, or on the plate to accompany a slice or two of roast pheasant.
We picked several pounds of brambles to bring home with us, some of which will be scrumptious bramble jelly by the time you read this. The rest are frozen and will be kept for the doyenne’s legendary bramble and apple pies at Christmas.
We thought that over the years of Moidart holidays, we had visited all the places of interest. Driving up to Mallaig and passing a finger post to
Morar, we realised we had never seen Loch Morar, which is Scotland’s deepest freshwater loch.
With all that deep water, it’s no surprise that Loch Morar is home to a monster to rival the Loch Ness beast. Those who have seen it, say it is a monstrous, threehumped beast with a large head on a long neck – not unlike Nessie – affectionately known locally as Morag.
It’s strange that the first sighting of the prehistoric behemoth should only have been as recent as 1887, although St Columba reputedly encountered the beast in 565 which may make him the earliest known evolutionary biologist.
My picture this week is of the doyenne beside a small support vessel called the Strathaird which has been laid up on the beach on Loch Ailort. Strathaird, the place, is a peninsula on the Isle of Skye, so the boat is not so very far from
home. So far, as we could learn, it was used on the mussel farms which rely on the clean waters of Scotland’s west coast to produce the healthy, nutritious, organic shellfish. There’s a crane in front of the wheelhouse to haul up the ropes of mussels suspended in the water, so that they can be stripped off for marketing, but lonely, wee Strathaird seems to be out of commission for now.
It’s no surprise that Loch Morar is home to a legendary monster