Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the locals were out taking photographs of the stuff because it hadn't snowed in Pissouri
for nearly 30 years.
When I arrive at Glenfinnan, there's not a cloud in the sky and Loch Shiel is just lying
there, barely ruffled in the faint breeze, disappearing into the pale distance between the
surrounding mountains, shimmering.
Loch Shiel: an appreciation, with reservations
.
Loch Shiel is a great loch. Well, I like it, anyway. It's never more than a mile wide but
it's nineteen miles long. Fairly deep, too, at 120 metres. At its head is the village of Glen-
finnan, where our friends the McFarlanes live. Their house looks out to the water and
the place where we moor the boat, then along the shore, past the Lodge (the Glenfinnan
House Hotel to give it its full title, and effectively the local) to the stone tower that is the
monument to the 1745 rebellion. Everybody seems to assume that the figure at the top
of the monument is Prince Charlie; it isn't, just a representative Highland chief. Beyond,
on a clear day, you can see Ben Nevis. There's a National Trust centre for the monu-
ment, the Glenfinnan viaduct - as seen on postcards, shortbread tins and in Harry Potter
films throughout the world - another hotel called the Prince's House, a photogenic Cath-
olic church with a bell in the grounds which you're allowed to ring, a pier and a railway
station and that's about it. No shops apart from the souvenir shop and café in the Trust.
There is a shed that doubles as a Post Office, but only when the wee detachable sign's
displayed.
At the other end of the loch there's the even tinier village of Acharacle, and between
the two nothing but scenery; loch and mountains the whole way, the hills descending in
height as they head south-west. There is a forestry track on the south-east side but it's
locked at both ends; only the forestry people and the postie have keys. On the north-west
side it's trackless.
There are beaches, fish farm cages and platforms with incongruous wooden sheds
perched on them, numerous little islands, submerged rocks to avoid and rivers to explore.
At the far end you could conceivably shoot the rapids - if you were in a canoe - and end
up in the sea (a century of global warming could well turn Loch Shiel into a sea loch).
Every year Les and I say we'll take the boat back out of the loch and onto the trailer
and go to another loch or even down to the sea, and every year we find there's ample to
do on Loch Shiel alone without having to go anywhere else. This does mean, though, that
we are unable to describe ourselves as a pair of old sea dogs. We've settled for being loch
puppies instead.
Back in the early part of the twentieth century, when the local roads were either non-
existent or little better than tracks, there was a steamer service linking the far end of the
loch with the railway station at Glenfinnan. These days the good ship
Sileas
plies the wa-
