The Knoydart Wilderness one…
It’s 6am and everything is wet. There’s a heavy dew beneath our feet and it’s a chilly 2 degrees. We’re camping in the shadow of Ben Nevis. It’s there, somewhere, hiding behind a thick layer of cloud.
We’re against the clock, racing to pack up camp, rustle up breakfast, brew coffee and catch our ride to the UK’s last remaining wilderness. Miles and I are headed to the Knoydart peninsula, on the west coast of Scotland, a 2-ish hour taxi drive from the Fort William; a town that should be so much nicer than it is.
By 8am, we’re turning left off the road to Inverness. This is the longest no through road in Britain - a whopping 22 miles of narrow, bumpy and poorly maintained tarmac that arrives at a car park overlooking the beautiful Loch Beag.
On route the cloud starts to lift just in time to see half a dozen highland cows marching towards us. They’re in no great hurry as they pass the car, their horns inches from the wing mirrors of the car.
We’re already revelling in the remoteness of this wild place, staring out the window and full of excitement for the day’s adventure. That is until we arrive at our destination and spot several houses, a cafe and B&B.
Mmmm, perhaps not quite so remote then?
After a few minutes, and several repacks, we set off. It’s 8.45am and we’re contouring around the north, shadowy side of these mountains. There’s only one path so we follow it, as it hugs the great loch and gives us an incredible early morning view towards the distant peaks. There is an unmistakable sense of space and eerie quiet.
We quickly pass a couple of walkers coming in the other direction, and go on to meet 3 or 4 other small groups over the next hour or so. We guess they’ve stayed at the bothy, a few hours walk from Kinloch Hourn and about half way to our final destination; Inverie.
The first few kilometres pass pretty uneventfully. It is however very, very boggy. We continue to walk in shadow for several hours and the morning chill lingers. We take it in turn to lead - no navigation is required and we spend most of the time wondering how on earth anyone could have ever, or indeed does still, live this remotely. This bemusement goes up a notch when we spot a small white cottage on the far side of the loch - we are hours from a main road, in fact we’re hours from any road, and the only access is via the loch itself.
It’s approaching late morning and we start to descend. As we turn a corner, we can see that the path leads down to a massive beach with what looks like a 4 x 4 track. Minutes later we arrive and find to our amazement that somehow there’s a well maintained track here complete with little storage shed. How on earth has that got here?
We trundle on knowing we’re not far from the bothy and a much deserved coffee stop. Only when we arrive it’s an underwhelming experience. The bothy was not at all as I / we had imagined, and dirty. Really dirty. Miles and I both agreed it would be best to go out and dig a hole than have to contend with sitting on the loo seat we were confronted with. We didn’t need to go, which was luckily as neither of us had bought a spade.
The place was deserted but not wild. In fact, it felt distinctly managed. There was a house, solar panels, several cars and a sheep enclosure. We were beginning to feel a little miss-sold on just how remote this place was supposed to be.
We quickly turned our attention to the stove and my new coffee gadget, a pocket-sized cafetiere that was made for just such an occasion. The kit worked so well that we had boiling water before I’d unpacked anything else, and a few minutes later I was sat sipping coffee with my feet in the little stream that was slowly trickling past. This might sound like an idyllic setting, and it was, but an army of midges and flies were determined to ruin it (in fact, Miles spent most the time wandering around looking like a bee keeper with a mozzie net over his face and decided to drink his coffee on the go).
We had agreed, during our stop, that we’d change plans and take the harder, longer path to Inverie. One that would see us walk an extra 7km in distance and climb up and over two Munroe mountains. I wish I could say this was after careful consideration of the options whilst looking at a map, but largely thanks to both us being attacked by flying insects it was not.
There was however good motivation for this. Ladhar Bheinn is considered one of Scotland’s most beautiful mountains and we were bathed in sunshine. It simply felt too good an opportunity to pass up. And when were we likely to travel the length of the country to have this opportunity again…
What could go wrong?
We were navigating via the OS app, using a route Miles had found from their library of local routes. We crossed a bridge, turned right and headed straight for our target; the two big munroes. The views were incredible and perhaps because of this we became a bit blasé to the fact we almost immediately lost the route.
We were on a path, it just wasn’t the path. Miles was navigating and seemed confident so we carried on. The path we needed was close by, apparently. Little by little, the path became distinctly less path-like, until we were certain it was now more of a goat track. Another 100m further on, and I was convinced the only goats that ever came this way were either running away from something or very, very lost.
Cue neck high bracken and a very steep slope. I had in fact totally lost sight of Miles and was navigating by the occasional shout or movement in the bushes. I’m sure at least half of the time these weren’t actually him.
Minutes later, I found Miles standing on a perfectly manicured path coming from our right.
We turned left, climbing the whole time, as entire sections of the path appeared, disappeared and reappeared, leading us to question who the hell had walked this route, and when. We were now climbing steeply and emerged into a beautiful valley set immediately below the ridge line we needed to reach. At best guess we still had another 600-700m to climb and the peaks still looked a long way away. It was a truly beautiful spot though, and would have made a brilliant camp site; everything was a lush green colour and there was a small river running from our left pouring off the steep sided slopes.
The path had disappeared again and we suddenly realised we needed to be on the opposite side of the river. This bit was at least straightforward as we made a makeshift bridge from huge boulders strewn across the valley floor. The same couldn’t be said for what came next.
Terra firma made way for a very steep and very long bog, the bracken returned and the path we needed had suddenly jumped several hundred metres to our right. It was extremely steep and the weight in our packs coupled with the sunshine made this a very arduous 2 hour climb. Every time we thought we’d reached the saddle of the ridge, we’d summit to find a false peak, and another 100m of climbing. We were definitely in sense of humour crisis territory.
With the ordeal finally over, we collapsed on a large rock and unpicked the hell of the last few hours which included a comprehensive character assassination of the idiot who’d plotted this route who, by this point, we both agreed had never actually walked this route.
Once on the saddle, the going was a little easier but for the first time we became aware of the sun starting to drop in the sky.
We could now see three peaks closely banded together that formed a ridge we needed to walk which then forked right towards Inverie and left to form an extended and impressive horseshoe ridge off to our left (as in the picture above) though it wasn’t obvious which peak Ladhar Bheinn was from where we stood. We crossed a small gully that was cast in shadow and was very wet underfoot. There was no path but a series of 40-50m short near-vertical scrambles that we needed to navigate. These proved quite fun but each time we scrambled to the top, we entered another gully and were faced with another 40-50m of scramble. On the upside, I found some wild blueberries growing on the upper slopes.
Half an hour later we were standing at the foot of the last ascent before we hit the top of the ridge. A clear path was now visible zig zagging back and forth towards the peaks. Miles and I were definitely feeling the effort but we were both nervously eyeing the sun and its position above the ridge. We did at this point also make a “Plan B” in case we lost the light on the ridge (the descent would be really sketchy, especially with the weight we were carrying) or the path mysteriously disappeared and there was no route across the whole of the ridge - we wouldn't be sure of this until we made it to the top.
Walking the ridge was fun; we knew the drops were either side of us, but weren’t so steep that it jangled any nerves.
Less than hour since we’d started scrambling, we’d made it to the summit. And what a view it was.
We didn’t just have the peak to ourselves, we couldn’t see another living being or anything man made, save for the single boat we could see in Loch Nevis away to the west. The view was spectacular, without a cloud in the sky or a midge to bother us. It was also deadly quiet, the wind, for once, absent. Satisfaction of having made it to the top was tinged with a slight unease as the coast still looked a long way away and we could also guess as to where Inverie itself lay. The sun, along with the temperature was dropping. We followed the ridge to the right, crested the final peak and started our descent.
I’ll be honest, navigating off the peak was pure guess work. Without a path, or a trusted route (we’d stopped looking at it along time ago), we criss-crossed bog and bolder field on repeat. We could see a path down in the valley that followed the river and disappeared into woodland and so we walked in that vague direction. Thankfully it worked and a little under an hour later we reached a bridge, crossed the river and picked up a 4 x 4 track. We felt like we made it.
At this point, the sun had set and it was dusk. Our best guess was that we had 2km left to walk. Our bags were feeling heavier than ever but we were spurred on by the fact the pub would be taking last orders shortly…despite the fact it was further than we’d estimated, it was the fastest we walked the whole day. When we descended through the forest and saw the village lights we were practically running.
We walked in to The Old Forge as last orders were called. This is what we’d come for. As live music played, food, beer and an Auchentoshan were ordered many hours after our table reservation had come and gone.
End note
