Corpach

The Wreck and the Water

On the tidal shore at Corpach a fishing boat lies beached on the shore, rusting, with Ben Nevis rising behind it. This is the MV Dayspring, built in 1975, which broke from its mooring at Kinlochleven during a December 2011 storm and washed up here. Locally it is known as the Old Boat of Caol, or simply the Corpach Wreck. At high water it sits half-submerged and the final approach across the foreshore is uneven, so pick your moment and watch your footing. The hull, the loch and the mountain line up into the view many visitors photograph.

The village sits where Corpach Basin opens into Loch Linnhe, at the western end of the sixty-mile Caledonian Canal. Twenty-two miles of that waterway are man-made; the rest uses natural lochs. The result is a shoreline that mixes working locks, a community marina and open tidal water, all of it backed by hills. The basin's picnic area looks straight across the water to Fort William and the Ben.

Food by the Basin

For food beside the sea lock there is An Cafaidh Mara, a café at the marina doing both sit-in and takeaway. The kitchen changes its specials daily, bakes fresh and runs a zero-waste policy on what it cooks. The full cooked Scottish breakfast is a menu highlight, alongside coffee and cake, but you will also find fresh haddock in Glen Spean beer batter, a chicken-tikka flatbread and toasties. It is the kind of place where a morning walk to the wreck ends with a plate and a coffee looking out at the boats.

Corpach's pub is Tradewinds, a short walk up from the basin. It serves evening meals and keeps a pool table and draught beer, and the menu runs to fish and chips, steak pie, burgers, macaroni cheese, scampi with chips and peas, and salmon with vegetables. There is outdoor seating for a dry evening.

Canal Paths and Community Woods

A walk from the village follows the canal. It is a 4.5-kilometre circuit, an hour or so on easy towpath, with only twenty-five metres of climb and a single busy road crossing to treat with respect. The published route starts at Banavie, but you can join it at Corpach. The path passes Corpach's double lock and the sea lock, runs past lock-keepers' houses that Thomas Telford designed, and reaches a picnic spot with Loch Linnhe, Fort William and Ben Nevis all in one sweep before returning past Neptune's Staircase at Banavie, where eight linked locks carry boats up nineteen and a half metres in about ninety minutes. If you would rather stay under cover, two small community-owned woods sit above the houses: the oakwood Cnoc nam Faobh beside Druim Fada and the pinewood Tom Giubhais above Guisach Terrace, given to the community by Arjo Wiggins when the paper mill closed, and kept by the Kilmallie Community Company since 2006.

Telford's Canal and Kilmallie Church

The canal itself was authorised in 1803 and opened in 1822, built under Telford with William Jessop. The Corpach locks were not a clean success: construction faults caused a partial collapse in the 1840s, and the canal closed for several years while the defects were put right. Kilmallie Parish Church, up the road and Category C listed, was built in 1783 to a design by Archibald McPhail of Oban and recast in 1890. Inside are a braced timber ceiling, an octagonal timber pulpit and an eagle lectern; in the churchyard, a memorial to Sir Alexander Cameron of Inverailort is topped by a robed figure that has lost its head.

Rail, Buses and Shinty Memory

Corpach station is in the village, unstaffed but on the West Highland line between Fort William and Mallaig, with Shiel Buses running into Fort William Monday to Saturday and a reduced service on Sundays. When Kilmallie's shinty club began in 1929, a newspaper later put the population at "about 200 inhabitants," and it still feels that size when the tide is out and the boat is leaning in the mud.