A Ghostly Village

We were quite put out this morning when, walking in bright sunshine along the coast to the north of Sanna, we met another human being. We don't meet humans in such wild and beautiful places. They don't belong there: they were cleared out, years ago, and sent to Canada or the United States, leaving behind them the shells of their houses.

The man appeared over the crest of a hill with a Scottie dog at his heels. "It's a ghost," the smallest member of the party whispered, and well she might, for the man wore a MacKenzie kilt. It turned out that he was as put out as we were at the intrusion of others, and as apologetic. He has been coming up to Kilchoan for years, and that particular part of the coast is his favourite - partly, at least, because he normally never meets anyone along it. He was, as all our visitors are, very pleasant, and allowed the two girls to be photographed with him.

The purpose of our walk was to visit Plocaig, one of Ardnamurchan's abandoned villages. The buildings are made of stone with no mortar, which must have made them desperately drafty, have rounded corners, very few windows, and lintels over the doors made from a single, massive piece of rock. The houses stand in a ragged row, facing out onto a grassy area upon which one can imagine children playing while their mothers watch from the doorways. Today their homes are inhabited by sheep.