Port Min is a tiny bay on the extreme western tip of Ardnamurchan, just south of the lighthouse. At the back of the bay is an area of coarse grassland much grazed by the few resident sheep; its soil is shell sand, some derived from an older, raised beach, some blown in from the present bay; in Gaelic it's called machair.
On the low hill to the south of Port Min are the broken stone walls of a small croft house - click on the photo to see them. It seems almost inconceivable today that such a remote, windswept spot was once settled, perhaps by a family. They survived on the animals that grazed the machair, such crops as could be raised from their lazy beds, the evidence for which is seen in the tell-tale stripes on the slopes around the bay, and the fish that could be brought ashore. Life must have been terribly hard.
The house itself is entirely made of rough stone, the walls a little over a metre high. The main living room measures ten metres by three, there is a smaller byre to the south, and the low, curved wall which projects out to the west of the entrance probably acted as a windbreak.
Over the hill at the back of the croft are hints of an even older habitation. Near the summit, overlooking the next bay, Port Garbh, are two deep cliff overhangs under which nestle the remains of crude rock shelters, ideal places for a more ancient period of human occupation. They are protected from the main wind direction; being high, with natural 'verandas' in front of them, they offer a wide view inland; and the rocks and pools of the cliff coastline would have provided a ready supply of shellfish. This is an ideal site for the Mesolithic hunters, our ancestors, who first came to Scotland some 9,000 years ago.
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