Ardnamurchan Area Blogs
Blogs (web logs) provide an ideal opportunity to explore the traditions, culture and wildlife of Wild Lochaber. We have put together a collection of local blogs and provide the titles and text snippets to give a taste of each entry with direct links to the main blog entry on the host website. We hope you will find time to explore the full articles and further information on the host blog sites.
Please feel free to contact us if you have any suggestions for blogs you would like to see here.
A Kilchoan Diary
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For the past twelve years we have lived in a house which faces southeast and which has a view which extends some twenty miles down the Sound of Mull. One of the joys of this view is that we have seen so many winter sunrises, this one from our bedroom window on a still February morning.In those...
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There's almost always a ship or a boat out in the Sound at any time of day or night, and we have spent hours over the years watching them from our house. The Lord of the Glens, a small cruise ship which is more at home in the Caledonian Canal and rarely ventures out beyond the protection of the...
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The summits of most of Western Ardnamurchan's hills offer magnificent panoramas, not least because the place is a peninsula so there are always combinations of land, sea and sky. This view is from the western slopes of Ben Hiant looking along the south coast towards Kilchoan. The hill in the...
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Mingary Castle had been abandoned for over 150 years when, in 2013, the Mingary Castle Preservation & Restoration Trust was set up to save the castle from imminent collapse and give it a modern purpose.It was my considerable privilege to be given open access to the castle throughout the three-...
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From Dale Meegan:The West Ardnamurchan Community Development Company and Community Council have received the final report following the Lottery funded community consultation which was held earlier this summer, and with it sixty recommendations. To view a copy of the report (2.4MB) click here, and/...
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Ardnamurchan's small and scattered population has meant that there are relatively few artificial lights at night. This gives it a night sky, when it's clear and the moon is new, which is genuinely dark. As a result, we've seen the moons of Jupiter and........spectacular meteorite showers - the one...
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Thank you for all the very generous comments and good wishes which have appeared on recent posts. I wish I had time to respond individually but our days are filled with the wearying task of packing up our possessions and making sure we leave the house in reasonable order.It has been a great...
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Watching the gannets sweep over the Sound of Mull and then suddenly tip their wings and plunge into the sea will be one of the memories of summer. At times we have seen as many as twenty manoeuvring in the air to attack a shoal of bait fish in the bay just below the house.The ringed plover will...
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It doesn't snow here much but, on the rare occasions on which we have enough for the snow to lie........the landscape is transformed.My impression is that it has snowed much less in recent winters. In the days when we had the shop, I can remember the community being cut off, the main problem being...
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I bought a digital camera in July 2006. For a long time pictures steadily accumulated in the photo library until there were getting on for 8,000, a number which I tried not to exceed, without success. I now have something like 12,000 pictures of Western Ardnamurchan, so the closing posts of the...
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Our house is sold and we expect to be moving on at the end of the month.After 21 years in Kilchoan, and now downsizing to a small flat, we have a huge amount to get rid of. Some we're selling - prices negotiable - like....APC Battery Back-Ups for power cuts and surges, two, bought August '16...
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We've been away for a very pleasant long weekend in Inverness where we were particularly impressed with the food in the two restaurants we patronised, but it was good to be welcomed as we returned along the road above Camas nan Geall by this magnificent sea eagle wheeling high above.We're always...
The Mingarry Blodge
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As you might of gathered by now, we're big fans of bumblebees, dragonflies, butterflies, moths, slow worms, frogs, red squirrels, wildcats and just about everything else you might find in the Highlands, even horse flies if they are golden and do not bite us; biodiversity is the spice of life after...
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Whilst there is plenty of wildlife around Mingarry Lodges, we decided to head out on the road during 2016 to explore slightly further afield in search of some new wildlife sightings. We have chosen twelve highlights, all of which can be encountered on day trips from Mingarry Lodges or on a multi-...
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Many of our guests take a day trip to The Isle of Mull or combine their holiday at Mingarry Lodges with an additional week on Mull taking advantage of the regular ferry service to the island. Mull has deservedly acquired a reputation as a great wildlife destination, especially for raptors and...
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The Isle of Rum is a popular day trip with guests at Mingarry Lodges. Not only a great wildlife destination but also an island with an interesting history and geology. With the recent reduction in ferry fares there is no better time to visit (a return passenger crossing from Mallaig costs just £8...
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Guests occasionally ask us whether we get crested tits in Mingarry. Unfortunately not, though they were rumoured to have been seen some years ago by the Church in Acharacle and we always keep a look out for them when walking in the pine plantations in High Mingarry. Crested tits in Scotland are...
Mingary Castle
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Apologise to those that follow this blog we have been working away to do the finishing touches to this wonderful project and therefore been a little tardy at putting up posts. But we have done it! and in celebration The Mingary Castle Preservation and Restoration Trust hosted two completion events...
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This is a guest post from David Howard, Mingary Castle's first guest.We were absolutely delighted and honoured to be the very first guests at Mingary Castle. I have been visiting Ardnamurchan since I was a boy and have made regular visits to the ruins over the years.I followed John Haylet's...
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So first I must start with an apology that this is the first blog in two weeks. It has been a very busy two weeks, launching our new website www.mingarycastle.com and making bookings LIVE! Plus starting the long but VERY enjoyable task of turning the inside from building site to luxury hotel. I...
