Drimnin

Whisky and a Restored Chapel

At the end of the B849, where the single-track road finally runs out on the western tip of the Morvern peninsula, there is a distillery that makes whisky without peat and bottles it in recycled glass. Nc'nean stands above the Sound of Mull, its copper stills turning organic Scottish barley into an unpeated single malt of citrus, peach, apricot and spice. The name is short for Neachneohain, a huntress and Queen of Spirits from Gaelic legend. Annabel Thomas left a London job in 2013, spent four years raising money and building the place, and saw her first organic single malt released in 2020. The shop is appointment-only, and there is a Botanical Spirit flavoured with juniper, wild herbs and citrus alongside the whisky.

Above the water, on a rocky knoll, stands St Columba's. Sir Charles Gordon, an Edinburgh lawyer, bought Drimnin in 1835, demolished the old castle, and used much of its stone to build a Catholic chapel here in 1838, which provoked hostility in an overwhelmingly Protestant district. The rectangular building has a three-stage square tower, round-headed windows and an Easdale-slate roof; inside, the barrel-vaulted ceiling has been restored and painted on blue. It fell into disrepair, was rebuilt between 2008 and 2012, and rededicated with the Earl of Wessex in attendance. It is now a chamber-music venue and home to the Drimnin String Quartet Academy. "To be creating music in the most beautiful landscapes of Drimnin is an inspiration in itself," said Katherine Yoon of the Kleio Quartet after a residency there.

Estate Walks and Clearance History

The walking starts at the jetty. A 3.6-kilometre circuit follows blue waymarkers past the chapel, the boathouse and the Maclean tomb before returning to the road. For something longer, the track to Doirlinn runs six miles each way, easy underfoot, with views out to Mull, Rum, Ardnamurchan and the Atlantic. A shorter walk of 1¾ miles each way leads to the ruins of Auliston, one of the townships emptied in the nineteenth-century clearances; its blackhouses still show their rounded corners and inward-leaning walls. Take a paper map, OS Explorer 383, because mobile coverage may be absent.

The clearances left more than Auliston. Lower Auliston, Carraig, Port a Bhata and Sornagan are all ruins now, and beside the Mungosdail River stands a mill thought to date from the seventeenth century, once fed by a water race and used by farmers who arrived with their crops by cart and boat. Before all that, this was Maclean country; Allan, the last Maclean of Drimnin, led a division for the Jacobites at Culloden.

Coast, Woodland and Wildlife

The estate runs from rocky coves and tidal pools through ancient woodland to heather moorland and pasture. Otters, pine martens, red deer and golden eagles are all recorded in the estate and wider Morvern, though none of them keeps appointments. From the chapel you look across the Sound of Mull to Tobermory and the white lighthouse at Rubha nan Gall.

Lochaline Services and Connections

Lochaline is the nearest service village, reached back along the B849. Lochaline Stores sells groceries and has a post office; the village also has fuel, public toilets and the community-run Hub Café, where chef Robert makes the cakes and barista coffee is served alongside Morvern knitwear, pottery and paintings. Lochaline's Whitehouse Restaurant cooks Rhemore Croft beef with braised oxtail and hazelnut-crusted halibut with beetroot risotto, and pours whisky from the nearby distillery. The turn-up-and-go ferry from Lochaline crosses to Fishnish on Mull; the mainland route runs over the Corran narrows to Ardgour. Fort William is the directly connected railhead, reached by Shiel Buses' 507; the Drimnin end of that service is request-only.

The Hall at the Road's End

Drimnin's Village Hall, a former Victorian schoolhouse, does the rest of a village's work: Burns Night, a summer barbecue and ceilidh, a film season through the winter, and a library run by volunteers. On a peninsula where the road ends and mobile coverage may be absent, that is where people gather.