We were dropped off at the end of the UK’s longest dead-end road. The Knoydart peninsula in the Highlands stretched before us – primal, remote, and magnetic. Somewhere ahead was The Old Forge, Britain’s most remote mainland pub in the village of Inverie – no roads in, no roads out.
I love a challenge. But before ordering drinks at the bar, my partner and I had two days of hiking ahead, across some of the Highlands ‘ toughest and most diverse landscapes. Read Next I live in Scotland – here are my favourite places away from tourist crowds Our journey began on the Caledonian Sleeper train.
Watching London fade as we drifted into sleep felt like a mini-adventure itself. Stepping off the train in Fort William early the next morning, we took a taxi to the tiny village of Kinloch Hourn, where our 15.2-mile hike began.
We set off around the steep southern shore of Loch Hourn, a narrow, fjord-like sea loch that cuts between the Glenelg and Knoydart peninsulas. The path twisted through rugged terrain, sometimes clinging to the loch’s edge, and all too frequently deteriorating into marshy ground that clung to our boots and splashed our legs with mud. But the inconvenience seemed trivial when we were rewarded with the majestic views over Loch Hourn.
Once a drovers’ and deerstalkers’ route, this ancient path also has a darker history as a coffin road, along which bodies were taken to Kilchoan burial ground in Inverie. The isolation was profound; aside from our conversati.
