The Achara standing stone rises from a field near the shore, 3.7 metres of pale rock tapering to a point, a prehistoric monument and one of the most impressive of its kind in Lorn. It sets the register for the place. Duror is less a village with a centre than a scattered settlement strung along the River Duror between the wooded slopes of Beinn a' Bheithir and the A828, which carries the coast road between Oban and Fort William.
Duror itself has no pub or restaurant now. The old Duror Inn is documented in 1882-83 archive photographs, and the village long ago lost its shop and post office. In practice this means a short drive. At Kentallen, a little way up the coast, the Holly Tree Hotel occupies the former railway station on the edge of Loch Linnhe, with a glass-fronted terrace that looks straight out over the water. The kitchen leans on the West Coast: Loch Leven rope-grown mussels steamed with garlic, white wine and cream; smoked haddock chowder; MacSween's haggis bonbons with peppercorn sauce; tiger prawns in garlic-herb butter. Dogs are welcome in the Captain's Bar and on the terrace but not in the seafood restaurant, though the same menu is served in all three. The owners keep two golden retrievers, Dougie and Fergus.
The Holly Tree also runs an in-house bakery counter, where Abbie makes scones, traybakes and cakes, with dairy-free options and gluten-free-ingredient bakes that can't be guaranteed allergen-free.
South at Appin, the Creagan Inn sources its beef, venison and seafood from named local suppliers and pours Fyne Ales from the Argyll farm brewery, alongside roughly 120 single malts and a shelf of small-batch gins. For self-catering provisions the reliable option is Port Appin Stores, a community-owned shop and Post Office run since 1984, which brings in venison, Buckie fish from a visiting van, Argyll Bakery pies, and Wee Isle Dairy milk and ice cream from Gigha.
Duror has two churches. The parish church is a plain Telford design of 1826, one of the parliamentary churches built to a standard pattern across the Highlands. St Adamnan's Episcopal church, built between 1848 and 1851, is the more surprising of the pair: its east window has granite tracery worked into a thistle, and inside there is a small chamber organ of 376 pipes, probably made by John Snetzler around 1760 and moved here from Fort William in 1880.
The walk most people come for climbs into Glen Duror forest, a 3.25-mile there-and-back on forest track and waymarked path, following yellow Saltire markers to Taigh Seumas a' Ghlinne, now a bothy, with the slopes of Beinn a' Bheithir opening ahead. The bothy was the house of James of the Glen. In 1752 the Crown factor Colin Campbell of Glenure, the Red Fox, was shot dead near Lettermore Wood. James Stewart was arrested two days later, tried at Inveraray before a jury of which eleven of the fifteen were Campbells, and hanged as an accessory. The case has never been solved, and it helped inspire Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped. Stewart's body was said to have been taken secretly from the Ballachulish gallows and buried at Keil.
For quieter days, Cuil Bay to the west is a pebble beach with a long view down Loch Linnhe, and the Highland Titles nature reserve, free to walk, has woodland trails and a herd of Highland cattle. Fort William station is about eighteen miles north up the A828; the West Coast Motors 918 bus stops at the Duror Hotel road end on its run between Oban and Fort William, though it comes seldom enough that you should check before relying on it.
Among the clergy who occasionally took services at St Adamnan's was the Reverend W. V. Awdry, who wrote the Thomas the Tank Engine stories. He did it in a glen whose own railway has since gone.