Fascadale

A beautiful morning, so we set out to walk along the tops of the cliffs to the west of Fascadale Bay. Fascadale (from the Norse aska, ship, and dahr, dale) lies on the north coast of Ardnamurchan, and its bay must have offered the Vikings who named it a wonderfully sheltered anchorage on that otherwise forbidding coast. Which is also why, during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, it became the centre for a thriving salmon netting operation.

The white building on the right of the photo used to be the owner's house; the white building to the left was a bothy. Both have now been extensively refurbished, along with an old croft house on the hill above them, as letting houses for Ardnamurchan Estate. The dark building at the top of the beach below the owner's house was an ice house, in which the salmon were stored before being transported along the peninsula to meet one of the London-bound trains. It says something about the impact of climate change here that all the ice needed was collected during winter from ponds on the flat land beyond the buildings: these days we rarely see a frost.

Sadly, overfishing resulted in a sharp decline in salmon stocks during the second half of the twentieth century. Some netting is still done, just along the coast from Kilchoan, using some of the original Fascadale equipment, but the catches are limited. And it is not only the salmon that have suffered, for the waters to the north seemed strangely deserted. As we enjoyed the extensive views across the Minch to Rhum, Skye, Eigg, Muck and Canna, only one fishing boat was visible; and during the whole of our walk we saw only two cormorants and a few seagulls.