A Walk beyond Mingary Castle

On a day of brilliant sunshine alternating with sharp hail-showers, we left the car near Mingary steading and walked down to the castle. In the low-angled light of a midwinter morning, the sun picks out the colours of stone and lichen on walls that are some seven hundred years old.

Just beyond the castle we came across a field of greylag geese. With those we could see and hear in the fields higher up, there must have been a hundred of them grazing on Ardnamurchan Estate land. We approached slowly and quietly but the sentinels spotted us quickly and the whole flock....

....took to the air almost immediately, circling before....

....flying off towards Ben Hiant.

We descended to the shore which, for some 2.5km, is a succession of shingle beaches and small promontories cut by occasional streams. Of these, only one, Allt Choire Mhuilinn, the stream in the mill valley, can be a problem to cross but today it was low. It reaches the sea by one of the clearance villages, Coire Mhuilinn, its broken walls just visible from the beach.

We walked to within .5km of MacLean's Nose, as far as the beach allowed, before turning back - this view looks back to Mingary Castle, with the snow-covered peaks of Beinn na Seilg and Stacan Dubha behind. As so often happens, the purpose of the walk - to find an otter - failed. Not that it mattered, for the walking in the warm sunshine was a pleasure, until we were almost back at the castle when....

....we were ambushed by this fierce animal, which leapt down from a small cliff and bounded towards us before rubbing itself against our legs, purring.

This is Henry - his story is here - who was out for a walk with the manservant he keeps to look after him. Henry likes his walks, and thinks nothing of taking his man for a saunter of a mile or so from his house down to the coast.