The Corryhully Horseshoe Hike through

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SOME folk call it the Glenfinnan Horseshoe, others call it the Corryhully Horseshoe, but the name doesn’t really matter. The two hills involved, Sgurr Thuilm (try hoolim) and Sgurr nan Coireachan always feel deliciously remote from tartan-clad Glenfinnan and its associated tourist trail.

The Raising of the Standard in 1745 was the genesis of a sad, some would say ill-conceived, episode in Scotland’s history but the legend of Bonnie Prince Charlie shows that the Braveheart syndrome was alive and well in Glenfinnan long before Mel Gibson put on his woad and waggled his bare bum.

The West Highland Railway viaduct forms a massive gateway between the Tartanland and the long approach to what is some of the roughest hill country in Scotland. Sgurr Thuilm and Sgurr nan Coireachan could almost be refugees from a few miles north, for in terms of their rough and craggy slopes, their air of remoteness and views to the west, they are really Knoydart hills misplaced.

There’s a small car park just off the A830 on the west side of the River Finnan in the shadow of the 21-span railway viaduct, a construction that’s been claimed, with some justification, as one of the great sights of the West Highlands – man-made sights that is.

Built in 1897, it was the world’s first significant mass-concrete structure. Isn’t it ironic that such a structure, built in one of the finest landscapes in the Highlands, should be made of concrete, that metaphor for urban decay, an unyielding, unforgiving material whose very name evokes the resonances of 1960s inner-city architecture?

It seems that concrete was used because the local rock was so hard and difficult to dress. The builder, Robert McAlpine, was apparently very enthusiastic about concrete, pointing out to anyone who would