The day we walked to Ockle Point (see previous post here) the sea was like steel, the only movement the slow suck of the waves as they washed around the cliffs and bays along this heavily indented coast. This view looks east towards the distant hills of Moidart, the furthest headland being Rubha Aird Druimnich the high, ridged headland.
One of the nearer bays contains a building that was once someone's home. The right-hand side was the dwelling house, the nearer side a byre in which animals would have been kept at night and through the long winter. It seems to have everything that was needed for a simple life: a small stream for water and washing, land for tilling, plenty of rough grazing for animals, bracken for bedding, and the sea for fish and kelp for fertilizer. And all sorts of unexpected materials would have been washed up by the sea including, during the Second World War, an unexploded German mine. After it had been reported, two people, a man and a woman, arrived to defuse it, after which they set fire to the contents. The mine burned red hot for three days.
There's plenty of evidence that the people who lived here worked the sea. In at least three places on the foreshore the boulders have been cleared to form places where boats could be pulled up across the shingle, the best being sheltered by a line of rocks clearly visible in the picture.The land belongs to the Cameron brothers, who own three comfortable letting houses at Ockle which offer unsurpassed walking; website here. Many thanks to Dochie for information about the bay, and to Moira Fisher for help with Gaelic translations.
The dwelling was in fact a fishing bothy where the men from Fascadale Salmon Fishing Station would stay and the left hand side was where the nets and fishing gear were stored.The green area around the dwelling was where the nets were hung up to be dried.
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