Laide

The village pub and store

Beside the wood-burning stove at the Ocean View, you may find Sprocket, the owners' dog, who comes with treats for any dog you bring in. The bar sits just off the A832, the coast road and main route through Laide, and it is the village's pub: a small hotel bar and restaurant with a separate games room and windows that face the sea and the sunset. Clare and Stuart reopened it after a long refurbishment in late 2020. The food is built around pizza, and there are darts, table football and board games for when the weather closes in.

A few steps away, the Laide Post Office and General Store does more than its name suggests. Debbie and Andy run it as a post office, a grocery and a filling station with petrol, diesel and Calor Gas, alongside hardware, pet supplies and over-the-counter medicines. They will source something they do not stock, cater for a dietary requirement, and make up an order for you to collect.

Gruinard Bay and its island history

The reason most people come is the water and the ground behind it. Laide sits on Gruinard Bay, a north- and east-facing stretch of low rocky shore and shallow water, with open views towards the hills of Assynt, Coigach and Fisherfield. The Highland Council's coastal plan calls those views fundamental to the area and records the jetty as an important access point to the sea.

Out in the bay is Gruinard Island. In 1942 and 1943 it was codenamed X Base, where scientists from Porton Down ran Britain's first controlled biological-warfare trials, exposing sheep to clouds of anthrax. The island was decontaminated in 1986, declared safe, and sold back to the original owner's estate after the announcement in 1990. It sits there in the view, unremarkable at this distance.

Woodland trails and chapel stonework

Most of the walking is in Laide Wood, an 86.6-hectare community wood on the edge of the village. The Forestry Commission planted it with conifers between 1963 and 1967; it was sold in 1993 and bought by the community in 2003, and since then volunteers have built the trails and bridges and planted more than 62,000 trees, mostly broadleaf. The work won a Queen's Award for Voluntary Service in 2019. The main circuit is an easy loop of about a mile and a half, roughly forty-five minutes, passing two lochans, a cascading burn, a wildlife hide and picnic tables, with views to Beinn Ghobhlach and An Teallach. The Heather Trail is shorter and firmer, compacted gravel wide enough for wheelchairs and mobility scooters, running to a level picnic area named View For All. Sightings recorded here include otter tracks, deer prints and white-tailed eagles.

Near the shore stands the Chapel of Sand of Udrigil, roofless, its east and west gables still largely complete, its walls of rubble bound with shell mortar and dressed in red sandstone. Tradition ties it to St Columba, though the standing stonework is late medieval; George MacKenzie of Gruinard is said to have repaired and re-thatched it around 1713. The burial ground is still in use. The earliest gravestone anyone can still read dates from 1834.

Nearby outings and getting here

For a beach, Mellon Udrigle lies a short way up the peninsula, a sandy cove facing north-east. Inverewe, about fourteen kilometres from Ocean View at Poolewe, is a garden the Gulf Stream keeps warm enough for Californian redwoods, with the Sawyer Gallery and Inverewe House alongside. On a wet day Gairloch Museum, housed in a converted Cold War nuclear bunker, holds the lens from the Rubh Re lighthouse.

Getting here takes some doing. The nearest railway station is at Achnasheen, some twenty-nine miles off as the crow flies and further by road, and the Westerbus coaches to Inverness and Ullapool run sparsely enough that you check the day before you travel.

The woodland sculpture

In the wood, an elm cone carved by the chainsaw sculptor Iain Chalmers marks the community's work. John Rippin, who chairs the woodland group, unveiled it on 29 June 2022.