The Ockle Road

Southeasterly wind force 5 to 6 all day, with almost constant, heavy rain, so the burns were running strongly, carrying dark, peaty water to the sea where it spread out to stain the shallows. None of which stopped us from taking a walk along the road between Kilmory and Ockle on the north coast, the sea across the Minches grey-green, with stripes of foam whipped away from us by the force of the wind, and Rhum, Eigg and Muck dodging in and out of low cloud. Hardly a ship to be seen, the only one being a white fish farm supply ship working its way towards Mallaig.

The road twists and turns as it scrabbles along the side of the hills, teetering above steep slopes which drop down to a succession of headlands and bays. The wildlife was doing the sensible thing and lying low, but the sudden herding of a flock of sheep drew our attention to a fox running across the field above Swordle. The area is estate land, and one of their herds of cows watched us, their feet sucking at the mud as they moved.

Just before we got back to the car the weather cleared so we turned aside into the walled graveyard at Kilmory with its fallen Celtic crosses and green carpet of spongy moss, to stand for a moment beside two graves, not those of locals but merchant seamen washed up on Ardnamurchan's shore in the dark days of 1940, their neat, War Graves Commission headstones bearing the terse inscription, 'Known unto God'.