Knoydart, Scotland (2016)

Knoydart is somewhere we have always wanted to visit. It’s the most remote part of mainland Scotland, and can only be reached by either boat or by a long (16 mile) hike in from Kinloch Hourn, as it’s roads do not connect to any other roads in the Scottish mainland. It lies on a peninsula between two sea lochs, Nevis and Hourn. The main village of Inverie is also home to Britain’s most remote pub, the Old Forge.

We made a failed attempt many years back, on the summer bank holiday, to walk in with our camping gear from Kinloch Hourn to Barrisdale Bay. Being a typical Scottish summer holiday, it poured down. In fact, the rain was so torrential that we couldn’t even reach the end of the road at Kinloch Hourn as it had flooded. So we made the wise decision to abandon our weekend plans and drive back home again. It was definitely the right decision as the rain didn’t stop all weekend!

Many years later, we decided to try again, but this time we booked luxury self-catering accommodation, Knoydart House, in Inverie and took the boat over from Mallaig. It was January, so this was a wise decision! Here is a link to the Knoydart House website, but note that now only the self-contained “studio room” and the separate Knoydart Hide, both sleeping two, are available to let.

There were six of us including Paul’s sister Glynis and her husband Tony and two of their friends Nita and Alistair who were all coming up from Cheshire.

We all decided to overnight in Glencoe on the way up at the fabulous Isles of Glencoe hotel. The day we set off it started to snow and it was sheer luck that we made it to Glencoe as the roads were getting quickly covered. The next day, there was still plenty of snow about, but at least it had stopped snowing and the roads were mainly clear, so we got to Mallaig for the boat with no trouble. The boat ride took 45 minutes and as it was dry, we spent much of the journey on deck.

The journey up through Glencoe and Glenfinnan is stunning in itself and we also made a short detour to show the others the fantastic beaches at Morar and Camusdarrach.

Due to its remoteness, there are only basic amenities in Inverie (particularly in January – even the pub was shut!), so we took everything we needed with us – suitcases filled with boxed wine and beer, food and snacks, as well as our clothes. The boatmen we ok about us taking loads of supplies, and the owner of the house met us with a trailer on arrival to transport our luggage up to the house.

We settled in, chose our rooms, and got the log fire roaring. We’d planned our meals and took turns cooking dinners. The kitchen was huge and housed a massive dining table next to the big floor to ceiling picture windows. There was an 8 person hot tub outside overlooking the sea loch, which we were in every night.

Winter (as with all our seasons) can be very hit and miss in Scotland, but we got lucky. We had five nights and four days of good weather, allowing us to get out on walks every day. It was only on our departure that the weather turned and we were lucky that the boat was still running (or maybe unlucky… another day or so would have been rather nice!)

Every day we headed out on different low-level walks of between 2 and 4 hours. There are plenty of mountains to hike up, but in winter conditions these are not for the inexperienced. We walked sometimes on the road (which was fine as there was virtually no traffic) and also on walking trails through forest and over moorland to beaches and lochs. Our collective favourite was the hike from Inverie to Barrisdale, though being 9 miles each we, we only walked half of it to the stunning loch in the photos below.

There is plenty of wildlife that potentially can be seen in Knoydart, but in winter we saw only birds, stags and highland cattle. The mountains were snow-capped, and the scenery was just gorgeous.

Knoydart is a fantastic place to “get away from it all”, get a little (or a lot) of exercise and take in some fresh clean air. We plan one day to see if we can take our dinghy and camping gear over to Barrisdale Bay from Arnisdale for another Knoydart adventure.