Silver Sands of Morar

Rum from Morar

Lunch on the beach

Our beach

Rum profile

Eigg

Silver Sands

Towards Skye

We were due to return home but the weather was too good not to make a day of the journey. We left Stromeferry by 10:30am and gazed in awe as we drove along Loch Duich at the Five Sisters of Kintail, voluptuous and flirting in the morning sunshine. However, it was too hot for the hills so we decided to visit the sands of Morar and took the A830, the Road to the Isles from Fort William. We had stayed with our young children in the old Garramore Youth Hostel at Morar in 1990 in a similar heatwave and visited again ten years ago when I road-tested my new tent during the frosty nights of April.

It was a good choice, we stopped in the sunkissed village of Arisaig for a drink in the hotel during the lunchtime heat.  We had hoped to take a trip to Eigg but the boat had left at 11:00am. We visited the marina and briefly entertained hiring a sea kayak and looked over some of the yachts for sale before finding an empty beach on the silver sands of Morar. We had a picnic and soaked up the sun in the balmy breeze.

The small isles were so enticing it could have been the Aegean. Is there anywhere better on days like this? Even after the wild remoteness of Applecross and the brutal beauty of Loch Coruisk on Skye, Morar is stunning. The clearances may have wiped out the original population and more recent generations of MacDonalds have left for the cities but the free-range caravans along the coastal strip are stark evidence of its everlasting popularity.

The views to Eigg and Rum were spectacular and we could see through to Knoydart where Sgurr na Ciche stood out like a sugar loaf from the crowd of hills. We continued the journey round Moidart and Sunnart surprised at the number of new houses, all equipped with midge burners. After a coffee at Salen, we made for the ferry at Corran from where we enjoyed the crystal clear views through Glencoe.

The Aonach Eagach ridge seemed like a mere handrail to heaven. It was all I could do to keep driving to the top of the pass. The journey was disrupted by a convoy of vintage cars as well as the usual swarm of motorcyclists and motorhomes. It was a worrying combination as the various groups of busy Sunday evening traffic diced with each other for road space all the way to Crianlarich.  It was still 25°C when we arrived home at 7pm, the midges had arrived to announce the start of summer.