Inverie

The Old Forge and the Boat In

The Old Forge stands whitewashed on the Inverie waterfront, facing the water of Loch Nevis, and since March 2022 it has belonged to the village. Nine local volunteers formed a community-benefit society after the building went on sale in 2021, and they were handed the keys on 28 March 2022. It started as a cottage in the 1770s, became a smiddy's forge and then the workers' social club, and has been the pub ever since. It is the only pub in Inverie.

Most people reach Inverie by boat, though the peninsula can also be walked in. No public road connects the Knoydart peninsula to the rest of Britain. The passenger ferry crosses from Mallaig in thirty to forty-five minutes, weather permitting, and Mallaig sits at the end of the A830 from Fort William, on the West Highland railway line. You park in Mallaig before sailing, and leave the car there.

Land, Water and the Village Pub

The Old Forge menu leans on what the land and water provide. The Stalker venison burger uses deer from community-owned Knoydart ground; the vegetables and salads come from Knoydart Farm, about five hundred metres away, which also composts the pub's food waste. Alongside it are Cullen skink, a haggis, neeps and tattie potato skin with whisky sauce, the Forge pie, locally sourced fish and chips, pan-seared cod, rhubarb cheesecake and a Knoydart Coffee affogato. The house ales are brewed just up the road — The Seven Men best bitter and The Old Forge Revival pale ale. Dogs are welcome on a lead, and there are six visitor moorings in the bay that cannot be booked and go first-come.

The travel writer Jacqueline Kehoe called it a place that "feels like the last pub on Earth," and described an interior of instruments, hikers and visitors pulled into a singalong.

Food, Brewing and Church Heritage

Two minutes from the pier, The Lookout is a licensed seafood-and-steak bistro with more than forty seats, a terrace and views down Loch Nevis. Its blackboard changes with what the boats land, but the sample menus run to a Mallaig kipper with poached eggs, grilled langoustines, smoked-haddock arancini, a Loch Nevis "Fishies 'n' Chips" of prawns, scallops, squid and haddock, and a Knoydart venison stalker's pie. The Knoydart Pottery and Tearoom does homemade soup, sandwiches and cakes and sells pottery, and pours Coffee Knoydart's hydro-powered, locally roasted coffee. The village shop is community-run, doubles as the post office, and puts its profits into the Knoydart Foundation; its shelves carry Knoydart Wild Venison, Lochaber Larder meat and Williamsons produce.

The brewery behind those house ales, run by Samantha and Matthew Humphrey, occupies the former Roman Catholic chapel of St Agatha, dated 1884, and takes its water from the Millburn as it comes down off Glen Guiserein. The Church of Scotland building, dated 1859, is a plain three-bay church of harled rubble with a bellcote and steep slate roofs, still in use.

Walking and Community Ownership

For walkers, the waymarked Knoydart in a Knutshell circuit is five kilometres from the pier, an hour to an hour and a half through native woodland and past a moss-covered drystone dyke, the River Inverie and Long Beach, with the hills of Rum out across the bay. The longer Inverie, Sandaig and Doune coastal route runs to nearly twenty kilometres past remote beaches and pre-Clearance croft ruins. The Ranger Station between pier and pub hires bikes.

The land story sits underneath all of it. In November 1948 the Seven Men of Knoydart staked claims to sixty-five acres against the landowner, Lord Brocket, in what became Scotland's last famous land raid. It failed. In 1999 the Knoydart Foundation, formed in 1997, acquired the estate — roughly seven thousand hectares, or seventeen thousand five hundred acres.

Wildlife and Long Beach

Otters are often seen working the River Inverie, and eagles are sometimes seen over the peaks behind the village. At Long Beach the campsite is a few picnic benches, some fire pits, a water tap and a compost toilet, with the shore a short walk on.