The Faces of Ben Hiant

We look out on this view of Ben Hiant every day from our house. Sometimes it's lost in cloud, but there's never a day when it doesn't show its face, even if it isn't always as spectacular as this picture, taken towards sunset on a January evening.

Its Gaelic name, according to Angus Henderson, is Beinn Shianta, the charmed or blessed mountain, and it's good to think that a mountain with such a name looks protectively down on this remote community.

To the visitor arriving along the B8007, the first sight of the ben is when one reaches Camas nan Geall. It's a magical combination, the peace of the bay below with the layered levels of land rising to the mountain's summit.

This is the view of the ben from the northwest, when it hides behind the ridge of Beinn na h-Urchrach. It's the view looking across the road in to Kilchoan after it has made a long detour to the north, to give the visitor the first views across the Minches towards the Small Isles. The old road to Kilchoan followed a much more direct route, running along the bottom of the near slope of Beinn na h-Urchrach.

From the road that turns left towards the lighthouse at Achosnich, one has much the same view but from a greater distance.

This is another view that's familiar to most, the precipitous face of the mountain as seen from the Kilchoan-Tobermory ferry. The red-hulled well boat is servicing the new Marine Harvest fish farm at Maclean's Nose, though the nose itself is to the right of this picture.

One of the less-known views of Ben Hiant is from the north, from the old Kilchoan road as it passes between the lower slopes of the ben and the Beinn nan Losgann forestry. The north face is everything one would expect of a north face, rocky, precipitate and lost in shadow through the winter.

In some ways, this is the most unusual view. It's taken from the northeast, from the open land to the north of the big wind turbine on Beinn Bhuidhe. It illustrates the concept of 'dead ground', for the whole of the narrow glen that carries the road is lost below the shadowed area, so it looks as if one can walk steadily uphill from here to the mountain's summit

Mink

Many thanks to Diane Todd for this picture of a mink she saw while walking at Plocaig.

In some ways I'm sad to see it as we've come across far fewer mink recently, partly because some effort has gone in to trying to eradicate them.

Heatwave

 

I watched these three sea kayakers round the point on Sunday afternoon, as I basked in the Ardnamurchan heatwave.  These paddlers couldn't have asked for more perfect weather.

Map Evidence

This is a clip from the OS 1897 revised version of the local 25" map showing part of the course of the Millburn. 'A' is where the fire station stands today at the Sanna turn. On a rather grey day we walked around this area, finding some of the things marked on the map.

The 'sheepfold' marked '1' is a very substantial structure built against a steep cliff. The inner part of the fold has a wall which is nearly 3m high in which there is a narrow entrance. We thought the area beyond might originally have been roofed as the builders took great pains to ensure that the top of the wall was horizontal, but the OS map would have had this area shaded had it been roofed in 1897.

'2' is a croft house with a byre attached at its northern end. On the map this is shaded, so in 1897 it was roofed and, presumably, in use. In the background in this picture are the Millburn and the Sanna turn. The map shows that there was once a footbridge which crossed the Millburn and joined this house to the present road.

Looking south across the house, one can see the low stone walls of another, quite large enclosure. The OS map doesn't call this a sheepfold, so it may have been a kale yard used for growing vegetables. On its south side was a small roofed building.

The modern road to Portuairk and Sanna follows the route of the track which, in those days, ran along the east side of the Millburn, but in 1897 there was also a track running along the west side. This joined the Portuairk road to Ormsaigmore. The picture shows the track at '3', where it crosses the burn that drains the area called Lag a' Choire.

But here's a slightly earlier version of the map, the 6" scale surveyed in 1872, and it shows another sheepfold (4), just to the west of the croft house, which we've never noticed. Ah well, it's a beautiful place to go for another walk.

Rock Shelters

The rocky hill in the centre of this picture lies on a straight line between Achnaha and Glendrian Caves, about 750m from the north coast. Rock climbers enjoy its vertical faces in summer, but otherwise it's rarely visited today.

To people in the distant past, however, the tumble of massive rock slabs around its west and north faces may have offered ideal shelters.

This picture shows the north face, with three possible shelters marked. Of these....

....the one marked '1' has most obviously been used, because its inhabitants have built, around the entrance to the shelter itself, a stone wall which encloses a yard.

The rocks used to build the wall are fairly massive: it's not the sort of wall that has been built for a short stay. The entrance to the 'yard' is to the right and, judging by the number of rocks which have tumbled off the wall, in its day it would have been a good metre or more high.

Over the years, the 'yard' and cave have been infilled by earth and vegetation, so the shelter, which at present only goes back a metre or so, may well have run all the way underneath the massive slab that forms its roof.

Shelter '3' is a simpler affair, but evidently had a wall built along its front - some of the rocks from this can be seen where they have fallen into the shelter.

Nearby, a spring issues from underneath another large rock, giving the inhabitants the convenience of fresh running water to their front doors.

As with all such things, dating the use of these shelters isn't possible, but the people who are most likely to have developed them are the nomadic hunter-gatherer groups who visited this coast in mesolithic times. Their middens - rubbish heaps - have been found on Risga and at Sanna.

The geography of the coast in their day would have been different as sea level was around 10m higher than now. Their nearest beach - today a raised beach formed of pebbles - is marked on this Bing satellite picture.