Ardnamurchan Photos

One of the pleasures of keeping the Kilchoan Diary is the photographs that readers send in.  These first two are from Brian Culcheth, who was here during the late autumn when the countryside - and the weather - was at its sparkling best.

Readers who have visited West Ardnamurchan will instantly recognise the first as being of Camas nan Geall, the bay of strangers.  Not only is this a beautiful place but its tranquility conceals over 6,000 years of human history, from a neolithic burial chamber to the much more recent 19th century village clearances.

Brian's second picture is taken from the long, winding road along the side of Loch Sunart which connects West Ardnamurchan to civilisation, taken at a time when the trees were at their autumn best.

Brian has a cottage to rent in the village of Kilchoan.  Details are here.

Tony Kidd, who lives in Ormsaigbeg, sent in these pictures of a recent walk he took along the beautiful stretch of coast to the north and east of Sanna on a day of sunshine and showers - with accompanying single and double rainbows. This picture looks across a wide bay - another un-named feature on OS maps - to the forbidding cliffs of Rubha Carrach.

No set of pictures from Tony is complete without a Buzzard.  We think that the number of Buzzards in the area has dropped considerably in the last few months.  When we were at Sanna on Sunday, we only saw one, and he spent much of his time wheeling above the village crying pitifully.

In winter this can be a bleak stretch of coastline, with rocky cliffs against which the Atlantic's seas pound.  Despite this, there's plenty of evidence of human settlement.  As well as what look like peat workings, the hill to the right of this picture is the site of what the OS mappers called a 'Fort'.  Very little of its walls are left, but it is a natural site for defence, with a beach beside it onto which ships could have been pulled up.

This view looks across Sanna Bay to Ardnamurchan Point lighthouse and a passing November shower.  Since Tony took these pictures the weather has deteriorated.  We had over 12mm of rain last night, and the winds have risen today to gust to Force 6 or 7.

Many thanks to Brian Culcheth and Tony Kidd for the pictures.