A wild world
Remote. Challenging. Beautiful. The Knoydart peninsula is all of these and more. Few places in Britain require such commitment to reach, but few offer such rich rewards.
Knoydart is about as remote and wild as you can get in this country... Here’s why you should go there
The catamaran skipped across the dark blue, white-flecked water. The weather was, as promised, outstanding. Indeed, the forecast from the Met Office app prompted my brother to declare that it would be “Wall-to-wall sun-balls” over the forthcoming days. Mallaig shrank behind the boat’s wake. This bustling port is a departure point for many an adventure; ferries to Skye, Rum, Eigg and the other Small Isles can be boarded from its dock. We weren’t bound for an island, and we weren’t even leaving the mainland. But when a boat is still the most convenient means of transport to reach it, the destination must be something a bit special. We were headed for Knoydart.
One of numerous peninsulas that jut out from the frayed western coast of Scotland, Knoydart is heralded as the most remote. Chock-full of some of the roughest mountain terrain in the Highlands and almost completely devoid of anything you could accurately call a road, exploring the peaks and valleys of Knoydart requires either a walk-in of epic proportions from Kinloch Hourn in the east, or a boat around the headlands of North Morar and into the western waters of Loch Nevis, arriving at the pier at Inverie Bay in the jaws of spectacular scenery. Retrieving our packs from the stowage area of the boat and slinging them into the back of the battered Land Rover Defender in which our benevolent host Jacqui had arrived to pick us up, the sense of adventure was already being to mount.
Our first night saw us comfortably ensconced in one of the Kilchoan Estate’s wood-clad cottages, surrounded by a herd of red deer who paid us little attention. They barely raised their heads from grazing as we strolled out to The Old Forge – Scotland’s most remote pub – for a seafood dinner and a beer or two on the sun-kissed evening shores of the sea loch. They seemed to eye us a little more closely on our return. Perhaps it was the food that we’d picked up from the well-stocked freezer of The Snack Shack; a 24-hour honesty-boxed community outlet where home-made meals can be purchased for bargain prices and maximum convenience. Making good use of the locally available ingredients, the dinner we’d bought for later in the week was mostly venison based. The deer knew.
DAY 1
The ‘Monarch of the Glen’, the red deer, is Britain’s largest land mammal and one of Scotland’s ‘Big Five’ wildlife spots. Barely eight minutes into our walk the next day we spotted another. Visitors to the Highlands are often excited by views of an eagle that turn out to be the no less impressive, but far more common, buzzard – the tourist’s eagle. But when you actually see a Golden Eagle, there’s no mistaking it. The great bird soared away from us, its wings outstretched, its movements bordering on lazy. It stayed in sight for some time as we followed the banks of the Inverie River, eventually disappearing as a speck into the summits and crags of the landscape as we passed the conspicuous Sovereign’s Orb/Holy Hand Grenade shape of the Brocket Memorial on the opposite hill.
One hour from Kilchoan, on the Alder-crowded banks of the Allt Gleann Meadail tributary, sits the
Druim bothy. Notably smart and wellpresented for such a building, the bothy owes its condition to being private, payto-use accommodation, booked through and maintained by the Kilchoan Estate. Wild campers milled about among the trees, packing up, preparing breakfast, and swatting away the midges that pursued them, their blood the sacrifice they made for a fee-free night outside the walls of the bothy.
Ask anybody about walking on Knoydart and the word ‘rough’ is likely to crop up. To explore it anything more than superficially requires going off-path, and the boot-worn trails that do exist only provide direction rather than any great ease of travel. A bog-cottoned traverse around the hem of Druim Righeanaich followed by a turf-grasping, cragclambering ascent onto its back brought more easier going. The increasingly defined ridgeline climbed consistently and ceaselessly up to An t-Uiriollach and, although a long-way off the shortlist of Scotland’s ‘Big Five’, the presence of a common lizard scurrying around the 600m contour was a good enough reason to stop and take in the wide sweeping views back to Inverie Bay and the sapphire sea beyond, while admiring the curious hardiness of the little reptile.
Knoydart’s proximity to the coast is appropriate, as the peninsula itself is a sea of peaks. Amongst them are several Munros, although which can definitely be said to belong to Knoydart it is as unclear as the vaguely defined borders that demark this wilderland from the rest of mainland Britain. But there are three Munro peaks over which there can be no debate. After a buck and a weave from the top of An t-Uiriollach, we found ourselves on the 946m summit of our first: Meall Buidhe. All around us, the waves of peaks crashed against each other in a storm of rock and ridge. The most striking of these crested away to the south-east. Sgùrr na Ciche is one of those ‘is-it/isn’t-it?’ in Knoydart Munros. It sits in an area known as the Rough Bounds, which seems to be considered by most to be Knoydartian. At the very least it’s an extremely close neighbour.
It’s an exceptionally attractive mountain, with a pyramidal profile affectionately known as ‘The Matterhorn of Knoydart’. It’s also a bugger of a peak to reach, and there’s certainly no easy way of linking to it from Meall Buidhe. But once seen it’s impossible to forget, and Sgurr na Ciche will from henceforth be amongst the top entries of your must-climb list (as it is mine) until the day you stand atop it.
A more natural follow-up to Meall Buidhe is Luinne Bheinn, another of Knoydart’s confirmed Munros. It sits away to the north-east and is linked by a near continuous chain of ridgelines and knuckle-like rises. The route is obvious but the going typically arduous. From the castle-like crags of Meall Buidhe we dropped towards Bealach Ile Coire. Many of the exposed rocky outcrops over which we clambered were patterned with remarkable swirls of stone; their pleasing aesthetics born from violent geological formation that squeezed and twisted the bedrock. Once into the level ground of the bealach the going was no less demanding. Here in the rough, hard
“ONE OF NUMEROUS PENINSULAS THAT JUT FROM THE FRAYED WEST COAST OF SCOTLAND, KNOYDART IS HERALDED AS THE MOST REMOTE”
terrain, no two steps are the same. It’s hard to get into a rhythm and there’s no opportunity to switch off when each foot-fall requires total concentration. But it’s epically rewarding.
The surrounding peaks are a mosaic of grey and greenery. They’re shapeless yet rugged; hard to define yet immediate and imposing. Those words that always seem to follow talk of Knoydart drifted back into my mind. Wild. Remote. Challenging. Beautiful. We climbed and dropped, climbed and dropped. From Bealach Ile Coire up to Druim Leac a’ Shith, down then up again to Meall Coire na Gaoithe’n Ear, then down to Bealach a’ Choire Odhair. Each summit brought new angles on new views; each sunken hollow hid them away.
As we began the final big pull of the day up onto Luinne Bheinn, Tom stopped and bent to pick something up. I tutted to myself; quietly judging whoever it was that had left the small strips of plastic he was gently inspecting between his fingers. But it wasn’t plastic. It was rock. A type of rock anyway. Mica schist is an integral part of Knoydart’s geology, and it’s an odd one. Its platy, foliated crystals form in a single orientation and are iridescent in appearance. And as the rock disintegrates, they flake off. The shed flakes can be so thin as to be transparent; the small jagged strips Tom spotted looked to all intents and purposes to be made of cellophane. But they were delicate and brittle, easily fractured and snapped. It seemed astounding that something so fragile could not only exist in, but actually form, such a rugged and thuggish landscape.
The inviting sweep of Barrisdale Bay was clearly visible from the thin, drawnout summit of Luinne Bheinn. It seemed a long way off. We made a descent over rough (there’s that word again) pathless ground to meet up with the track that runs along the glen floors from Inverie Bay on Loch Nevis in the west, all the way to Barrisdale Bay on Loch Hourn in the north. By the time we reached Barisdale Bothy it felt a long way too. Unlike Druim Bothy, the Barisdale bunkhouse is open to anybody. Like Druim Bothy, though, you’re expected to pay. It was a glorious evening, and we had no intentions of spending it within the gloomy confines of the bothy, but wild camping around Barisdale is limited; signs along the path politely ask campers not to pitch in the vicinity of Barrisdale Bay in order to protect the flora and fauna. There’s a dedicated camping field opposite the bothy, but the midges had already staked their claim. Instead, we wandered on past Barisdale until the camping restrictions ended, found a blissful little loch-side spot by a pebble beach, and began to unpack.
I pointed at three speckled ovals sitting in a shallow nest on the stones. “Tern eggs,” Tom observed. So we packed up again and moved further away so as not to disturb the nesting birds. Only when we were entirely sure we’d found a spot unlikely to offend or disturb anyone or anything did we finally drop packs and establish our bivvy. The evening drifted by under a glorious dusk light, and we watched the sun slump lazily beyond the waters of the loch, its swollen orb and rich colour diffused only slightly by the close-weave mesh of our midge nets.
DAY 2
The valley of Coire Dhorrcail is one of the most typically Highland landscapes you’ll see anywhere. As we rounded its jaws and followed the Allt Coire Dhorrcail into the glen, all that was
missing was a stag on the skyline, a bagpiper in the valley, and a Westie Terrier chasing a haggis around a tin of shortbread. If the scene was idyllic, the steep ascent from the crystal waters of the stream up the flanks of Druim a’ Choire Odhair was hot and tortuous. But like so much of Knoydart, the rewards for the effort were outstanding. The narrow crest of the ridge climbed steadily towards the shark-fin top of Stob a’ Choire Odhair, beyond which the ground narrowed thrillingly to a steep sided arête. And the whole way up, the glorious fjord-like sweep of Loch Hourn was at our backs, stretching further and further as we climbed higher and higher toward the 1020m summit of Ladhar Bheinn.
From the peninsula’s highest summit (unless you count 1040m Sgùrr na Ciche as part of Knoydart) water is everywhere. If only the glaciers had tried a little harder and dug a little deeper, it could have been the wildest of Scotland’s islands. Nevertheless, water is a key part of Knoydart’s DNA. The only other person we saw on Ladhar Bheinn was a man who had kayaked into Loch Hourn, camped on its shore overnight, and made an early morning ascent of the mountain. He was on his way down as we were heading up, planning to retrieve his kayak and begin the paddle home. These are the sort of adventures Knoydart attracts.
The spectacular Coire Dhorrcail looked even more impressive from above than it had from below, its craggy headwall impossibly vertical. There was plenty of time to admire it; the rocky southeastern spur of Ladhar Bheinn curls for nearly 2km around the corrie, eventually leaving it above the steep and scrambly buttress of Stob Dhorrcail. From here we joined Aonach Sgoilte, an enthusiastically undulating ridge that forms the northern wall of Gleann an Dubh-Lochain, to continue the return journey back to Kilchoan. Eventually we’d drop down its rough and difficult flanks (what else would they be in Knoydart?) to plug back into the low-level Inverie-Barisdale track, following it west this time past abandoned trout farms towards Inverie. Here we’d learn that although The Old Forge was shut that evening, the locals gather in a small shack opposite the pub to socialise; a ‘bring a bottle’ kind of affair at which visitors appear to be welcome. But, for now, as tired legs eked out the last few mountain-miles along the top of Aonach Sgoilte, appreciative eyes drank in the ridge-top views over Scotland’s wildest peninsula.
It may not be an island, but Knoydart has as much of an island feel as many of the Highland’s larger sea-surrounded landscapes – perhaps even more so than some (Skye, we’re looking at you). People talk of being ‘on’ Knoydart, rather than ‘in’ it, and from many angles it appears almost totally cut off by water. The names of the lochs between which the peninsula is sandwiched – Loch Nevis to the south and Loch Hourn to the north – are sometimes translated as ‘Loch Heaven’ (Loch Néimh) and ‘Loch Hell’ (Loch Iutharn). Although these are perhaps overly romanticised translations, it seems entirely appropriate to describe Knoydart as sitting between heaven and hell. It is hard and unforgiving, unrelentingly awkward and stubbornly uncooperative. It’ll make your muscles ache, your lungs burn, and have you questioning your sanity. But it’s also beautiful, remote, wild, idyllic, isolated, and all those other qualities that make the effort worth it, and that we seek in the mountains for the simple reason that they can’t be found anywhere else.