Tag: Alpacas

Arisaig 2026 2: The Big Day

My second post in the series about my holiday in Arisaig, dealing with my birthday itself.

Welcome to post two in my series about this year’s holiday. My birthday this year (the same number birthday that Bilbo Baggins missed due to other events on the day of his arrival by barrel at the shore of the Long Lake) fell on a Sunday. The birthday meal was booked for Mingary Castle (there is also a Mingarry that has a good restaurant, but we were going to Mingary, we where we had eaten last year) at 1PM. Therefore we set off at 11AM.

THE OUTWARD JOURNEY

To get from Arisaig to Mingary Castle we had to go east, south and then west rather further than we had started, since this castle is quite near the western end of the Ardnamurchan Peninsula. Along the way we crossed the river Shiel by a stone bridge that I remembered with crystal clarity from an earlier Scottish sojourn. We then had a long run west along the northern shore of Loch Sunart, passing Salen (a place I first saw way back in 1993), Glenborrodale, site of a nature reserve, the Ardnamurchan distillery, and sundry viewpoints. The turn off for Mingary Castle is just east of (i.e before) Kilchoan, and we arrived there in good time, but not ridiculously early.

THE MEAL

It did not take long to identify two courses I wished to eat (a pork terrine starter and slow cooked beef with Yorkshire pudding, carrot, broccoli and triple cooked potatoes) and a suitable beverage to accompany them (Dark Mile, brewed by the local Glenspean brewery). The food was excellent, and the surroundings pleasant (I was one of at least three people that day who had come for a birthday meal). After I had finished I did some walking around outside the castle and got some photographs.

THE JOURNEY HOME

We went home by the same route we had come, which enabled me to get pictures of places I had missed on the way out (I sat in the same seat, the non-driver’s side rear seat, for both journeys, so was facing opposite sides of the road each way). Thus as you will see from the gallery the outbound journey was light on pictures from Loch Moidart, which was on the wrong side of me that way, and heavy on pictures from Loch Sunart, while the homeward journey was the reverse.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off…

The crossing of the river Shiel on the outbound journey – only the third picture I took because I was on the wrong side for most of the good early scenery.
Mingary Castle
These woolly creatures are not the local sheep – I reckon they are alpacas, and as such a long way from their native Andes.
Here as well as the possible alpacas there are two ordinary sheep for comparison purposes.
The images from the drive back start here.
The Bridge of the River Shiel – compare how many pictures there are still to come with how few there were before the first picture of this crossing.
A couple of pictures of parts of the Glenfinnan Viaduct.
Beasdale is such a minor station that is actually a ‘request stop’ – if you intend to alight there you must notify the conductor.

Scotland 2022: The Western Edge of Mainland Britain

An account of a quick visit to the westernmost point in mainland Britain.

I am continuing my series about my holiday in Scotland (after a long and stressful day of travelling back on Saturday I was far too tired to do anything yesterday). We have reached Tuesday (six days ago now), the centrepiece of which was a tour of the Ardnamurchan Distillery. That will be the subject of my next post, while this post deals with the first event of that day.

ARDNAMURCHAN POINT

The Ardnamurchan Distillery is located just west of the village of Glen Borrodale on the northern shore of Loch Sunart, which is the southern edge of the Ardnamurchan peninsula. Beyond this to the west is Ardnamurchan Point, the westernmost point of mainland Britain (to give you an idea of how far west the Ardnamurchan peninsula juts out to the west, the Inner Hebridean isle of Eigg is due north of the western half of the peninsula), and our plan was to see this before arriving at the distillery for the 2PM start time of our tour.

Unfortunately, a combination of a later than intended start and the poor quality of some of the roads meant that we only had time for a very brief stop at the Western edge of mainland Britain before turning round and heading back to the distillery.

Here are the pictures from the outward car trip:

I just had time to take two pictures at the point:

The journey back to the distillery was enlivened by an encounter with someone I have dubbed ‘psycho cyclist’. We were behind him on the road and he took a long time to pull into the side so that we could get past, and did so with astonishingly bad grace – swearing at us and gesturing manically. I am normally sympathetic towards cyclists, but this individual did himself no favours with his wilfully aggressive and confrontational attitude. I took a few more pictures heading back: