Inverasdale

A Scattered Shoreline Settlement

The Old Schoolhouse Tearoom occupies Inverasdale’s former primary school, now a community hub run by Wester Loch Ewe Trust. Volunteers serve tea, coffee and homemade cakes; check current opening details before travelling.

Inverasdale is a long, scattered run of crofts along the single-track B8057 on the western shore of Loch Ewe, gathered loosely at Brae and Midtown and trailing on through Naast, Mellangaun, Firemore and Cove. The croft grid was laid out in the mid-1840s, and by the time the first Ordnance Survey came round in 1881 there were sixty-six roofed buildings strung along the shore.

Landscape and Paths Along Loch Ewe

The shore alternates between rock and sandy bays. The views run east across the sea loch to the hills of the Great Wilderness, rather than out to open water, and behind the crofts a raised-beach escarpment rises from peatland and small hill lochs, the work of the Loch Maree Fault. Firemore has a sandy beach, north of the settlement, easy to reach.

The Convoy Coast

From a walkers' car park just beyond the former Free Church, an old and rather wet path follows the foot of the escarpment for ten kilometres towards Camas Mòr, passing woodland, lochs and the deserted settlement of Lochadraing on the way. Take a map. Further north at Cove, a track climbs from the road end through the remains of a Second World War coastal battery, past gun and searchlight emplacements, to the Arctic Convoy memorial at Rubha nan Sasan.

Concrete from the war years still sits in the heather. In January 1941 Loch Ewe became the assembly point for the Atlantic and Arctic convoys. More than a thousand service personnel came, at times outnumbering residents three to one, and up to ninety-five ships lay in the loch at once behind a three-layer boom net, barrage balloons and anti-aircraft guns. One gun platform at Boor is a many-sided concrete slab the locals named the Threepenny Bit, after the coin. Churchill called the route these ships sailed "the worst journey in the world." On 26 February 1944 the American Liberty ship SS William H Welch missed the loch's entrance in a storm and broke apart at Eilean Furadh Mòr; twelve of seventy-four crew survived, pulled from the water by crofters, coastguards and servicemen.

Practical Stops in Poolewe

There is no dedicated pub or general shop in Inverasdale itself; the Old Schoolhouse is a limited-hours tearoom. Poolewe Hotel, about 4.3 miles from Inverasdale in a straight line, has a public bar; the road journey is longer. Poolewe also has a small indoor swimming pool and the National Trust for Scotland's Inverewe Garden, whose sheltered planting grows at a latitude north of Moscow. The nearest railway station is a long drive east at Achnasheen, on the Kyle of Lochalsh line; no regular bus reaches Inverasdale, so check timetables before you travel.

Kay Matheson and a Living Community

Kay Matheson was born at Firemore in 1928, and in 1950 she was one of the four students who removed the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey. She became a teacher and a Gaelic campaigner, and helped found the museum at Gairloch that now holds her recordings of local singers. The mobile library still calls at Naast, Midtown and Cove, once every three weeks.