Over May Bank Holiday, I walked around the Rough Bounds of Knoydart in the Western Highlands, with Ginny, Griff, Kitty and Swetty. The Knoydart Peninsula is the most isolated part of mainland Britain, and is only accessible by either driving 21 miles down Britain’s longest dead-end road then walking in for two days, or by open boat from Mallaig. It was a great trip, although it would have been better if I had managed to catch the train Gin & I were booked on – that would have saved an emergency £270 train fare before we’d even left London!
We chose the former, and left the car at Kinlochhourn on the Friday morning. We walked a wet seven miles (rain and rivers) down the shore of Loch Hourn, and slept in the bothy at Barrisdale that night because the weather was coming in and we’d arrived early enough to get a few bunks.
The day ended with a stunning rainbow spanning the loch.
The next day, the weather was even worse so we changed our plans and walked over the Mam Barrisdale pass to the tiny settlement of Inverie, rather than climbing Ladhar Bheinn. At 400m on the pass the wind was so string we could hardly stand, so it was the right decision. Also, Inverie has a pub (not just any pub, Britain’s remotest pub, and a pretty good one at that), which we were in by 2pm.
We camped on the bivouac site, on the beach with possibly the least shelter on the whole coast. I worked out why in the night – the ground was sandy, and the torrential overnight rain drained away – the rest of the land was peaty and a total bog.
We got up at six the next morning. Not only had the rain had stopped, but the sky was clearish and there was a light coat of snow on the tops. We climbed to the ridge of the corrie and spent the next five or so hours alternating between rain, freezing hail and long warm sunny patches. We could see the next few weathers as they queued up over Skye to approach in turn. The ridge went up and down a fair bit, and there was a little scrambling, but after lunch we got to the main body of Ladharr Bheinn and half an hour later we summited at 1010m.
The descent was much quicker as we bombed straight down the steep boggy shoulder and back to the pub for dinner. We camped again that night, then caught the 8:30 ferry to Mallaig. It was a freezing open boat and the 45 minute crossing drenched everybody in sea spray. After a breakfast where we had numb hands and couldn’t hold our forks properly, Griff and Kitty set off on the four-hour trip to fetch the first car. The rest of us caught the train (one of the top train journeys in the world, and a Harry Potter location) to Fort William to meet them, and drive back to Edinburgh for urgent shower facilities. I was back in work by Tuesday afternoon, exactly five days after I’d left.
The full picture gallery is here. If you’ve got Google Earth the KMZs are here and here.