This short stay away was to visit Ardnamurchan Point as part of our Six Points Tour (click to get more detail).
We stayed at a lovely AirBnB lodge at Torlundy just north of Fort William having driven through Glencoe to get here. It was a wonderful journey which we enjoyed very much.
The first place we visited was Neptune's Staircase, the longest staircase lock in Britain, lifting boats 64 feet (20 m). It consists of eight locks, each 180 feet (55 m) by 40 feet (12 m), and it takes boats about 90 minutes to pass through the system. The current lock gates weigh 22 tons each, and require a team of at least three lock-keepers to operate the staircase. They usually operate to save water, they try either to fill each cut with ascending boats or with descending boats, or to allow for passing. Prior to mechanisation, the locks were operated by capstans but now it's done by hydraulic rams and push-button control. The base plinths of the original capstans can still be seen, although the capstans themselves have been removed. The photo shows Ian and Tara at one of the middle locks beside a lovely yacht that was on its way north up the Great Glen to Inverness then round to Newcastle ... they live near us in Durham!
Ardnamurchan Point lies at the western end of the Ardnamurchan peninsula in Lochaber, Highland, Scotland. Ardnamurchan Lighthouse is located on the Point, just over 1 km north of Corrachadh Mòr, the most westerly point on the island of Great Britain, which is a few metres further west than the Point. The Six Points Tour is supposed to cover the land extremes at the four compass points in Great Britain, but we've taken that to mean ACCESSIBLE compass points - Corrachadh Mòr isn't accessible! The nearest settlements are the crofting townships of Portuairk and Achosnich and the village of Kilchoan (5 miles/8km).
The point lies seven miles south of the island of Muck, with Eigg and Rùm a few miles further to the north. Coll is situated nine miles to the west, and Mull is five miles south.
Not many people have heard of it, thinking that Land's End is furthest west ... but they're wrong! You will have heard of it if you listen to the shipping forecast because it's always mentioned on there.
The point is about 75 miles from Fort William - but that takes over two and a half hours to travel. The roads get progressively worse with the final few miles being proper "shit show fuck off" roads - single track of course but with switchback corners, blind summits, the lot! Not a road for large camper vans (although that doesn't stop them using it!) We went via Glenfinnan (famous for the Glenfinnan Viaduct from one of the Harry Potter films) - which was a bit disappointing from the road - and Glenuig, but came back via Strontian and the Corran Ferry. The return route was a little shorter and quicker but there wasn't much in it. We find routes with ferries more exciting, though.
Strontian is worth a mention - Strontium is named after it, making it the only place in the UK with an element named after it. While natural strontium (which is mostly the isotope strontium-88) is stable, the synthetic strontium-90 is radioactive and is one of the most dangerous components of nuclear fallout, as strontium is absorbed by the body in a similar manner to calcium. Natural stable strontium, on the other hand, is not hazardous to health. Strontium was used extensively in the manufacture of cathode ray tubes for old fashioned TVs and for extraction of sugar from sugar beet.
Anyway, back to Ardnamurchan Point ...
This is the lighthouse at the Point - you can't get much further west than this in mainland Britain.
It's 36 metres tall (118 ft), made of pink granite and was completed in 1849 to a design by Alan Stevenson (one of the "Lighthouse Stevenson family" - not to be confused with the Lighthouse Family). It is the only lighthouse in the UK built in the Egyptian style.
The place has an excellent cafe and gift shop just down the hill in the old keepers' accommodation. It's really nicely done and has very good coffee and sandwiches. They even had milk alternatives.
Unusually, there's no parking charges in their car park, which is really good!
As mentioned above, we came back via the Corran Ferry, one of few remaining scheduled mainland vehicle ferries in Scotland. The route lies on one of the ancient drove routes from the Hebrides to the cattle markets in Central Scotland. Today, the ferry is a crucial link between the main A82 road with the otherwise extremely remote Morvern and Ardnamurchan peninsulas.
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