The Corran Ferry crosses the narrows in about five minutes, seven days a week, and its coming and going sets the rhythm of the place. On the Ardgour side the slip, the lighthouse and the Inn stand together at the water, and everything else — the church, the hall, the school, the scattered houses of Clovullin — sits just inland. Loch Linnhe tightens here between two shores: the A82 and Fort William on one, Ardgour's quieter side on the other.
The Inn at Ardgour is the first thing you reach off the boat, white-harled and double-gabled, its core attributed to Thomas Telford around 1815. Eleven bedrooms look straight across the loch. The evening menu keeps close to home — Scottish smoked salmon with oatcakes, haggis bonbons with neeps, tatties and whisky sauce, beer-battered Lochaber haddock, Highland venison casserole, a fish pie built from smoked salmon, haddock and smoked haddock, and a five-bean and chickpea curry for vegans. Dogs are welcome without charge in the bar and in pet-friendly bedrooms, with notice, though dangerous breeds and animals that might alarm children are not allowed.
A mobile cafe, the Nomad, sets up in the inn's car park.
A short way inland, Ardgour Parish Church is another Telford building, one of the Parliamentary Churches raised across the Highlands and finished in 1829. It is grey granite with sandstone dressings, pointed windows with Y-tracery, a bellcote on the gable, plain pine pews and a reused brass eagle lectern; the communion furniture was carved in 1930 by Pilkington Jackson. It is the only Parliamentary Church with a vestry, provided for the minister who rowed over from Onich on alternate Sundays.
For a walk, the Corran Narrows circuit through Clovullin runs about two and a quarter miles and takes an hour, with almost no climbing. It passes the church, two lochans — Lochan na h-Eaglais and Lochan Eoin Mhic Alastair — the school and the shore, with views up the loch to Caol and across to Beinn a' Bheithir. The last stretch follows the grassy verge of the busy A861, so it is not quite a traffic-free family stroll.
Behind the settlement rises Sgurr na h-Eanchainne, 730 metres, and down its face spills a cascade the MacLeans call Tubhailt Mhic ic Eoghain, MacLean's Towel. Out at the point, Corran Point Lighthouse was built in 1860 by Thomas and David Stevenson to guide boats through the tidal streams; in 1898 it became one of the first automated lighthouses in Britain, roughly a decade ahead of any in England.
The MacLean family has been associated with Ardgour for more than six centuries. Hugh MacLean built the present Ardgour House in 1765 for £611 8s, and it was rebuilt after a fire in 1825. The house and its parkland — old lime, oak and horse-chestnut, rhododendrons and a burn named Allt an t-Sithein, the Fairy Burn — are private.
The village keeps a play park at North Green and a memorial hall that has stood since 1932, put up in memory of the chieftain Alexander MacLean and still used for concerts, pantomimes and sports screenings, its walls lined with heritage photographs.
Fort William, the nearest substantial town and railhead, is about twenty minutes off when the ferry runs to time; the station sits on the West Highland line and has step-free access. The single-track A861 carries Shiel Buses' 506 between Kilchoan and Fort William, though it makes a single through run each way. Strontian, a quarter of an hour west, is a practical stop for food and fuel. Half a mile south on the far shore, a gravel trail climbs beside the Abhainn Righ gorge to Inchree Falls in about an hour, past a picnic area and a wildlife hide.
Tradition holds that the MacLeans will leave Ardgour only when MacLean's Towel dries up. The family notes that the rain has not yet failed them.