Lochaline

White sand at the end of the A884

The beach in front of the Lochaline Hotel is white, and it is white for an industrial reason. Since the Second World War a mine here has produced exceptionally pure silica sand, and the reject sand was tipped out to form an artificial beach at the water's edge below the hotel. The hotel itself, a stone building of 1920, was raised from stone mined beside it.

You arrive by descending the A884, which ends at the loch. Lochaline sits at the mouth of Loch Aline, a sea loch on the Morvern peninsula, with the Sound of Mull along its southern and western edges and Mull across the water. The wooded shores, the harbour, the ferry queue and the mine workings are all in view at once.

The CalMac ferry crosses from here to Fishnish on Mull as a turn-up-and-go service, though you still pick a date and check in ten minutes before departure, and a bicycle travels free if you add it to a foot-passenger booking. The A884 ends at Lochaline; reaching the railhead at Fort William otherwise means the sparse 507 bus, which varies by school term, so check the timetable before you rely on it.

Harbour tables and ferry food

The Whitehouse Restaurant, down at the harbour, uses ingredients that are locally sourced, sustainable and seasonal. The menu changes weekly: a Tobermory smoked-fish platter of hot- and cold-smoked salmon with mackerel pâté, Rhemore Croft beef with braised oxtail, hazelnut-crusted halibut with scallop roe and beetroot risotto, sautéed Mull langoustine tail with seaweed chutney, or a lentil, caramelised-onion and smoked-cheese Wellington. The drinks stay local too, with Nc'nean botanical spirit and beers from Ardgour and Glen Spean.

For something quicker, the Lochaline Snack Bar by the ferry does bacon rolls and venison burgers, and on Fridays Liz serves the fish and chips. A couple of miles out on the Ardtornish Estate, the Coal Shed Cafe cooks seasonal food from the estate's own ground, sells precooked meals to take away, and welcomes dogs.

Club life and the wooded shore

Drinking is a matter of the Lochaline Social Club, a small private members' club beside the ferry terminal where temporary membership is available and the evening runs to a pint, darts, pool and pizza, with the loch in view. There is real cider but no cask ale. The Lochaline Hotel looks across to Mull and the ruin of Old Ardtornish Castle. Lochaline Stores is the general shop and post office, with community-run fuel pumps nearby.

A walk starts at the Ardtornish Estate office and runs eight and a half miles there and back to Old Ardtornish Castle, following the wooded shore of Loch Aline past a lime kiln and views of Kinlochaline Castle, with a rough optional detour to the waterfall Tennyson visited. It is three to four hours with only modest climbing, and there is livestock about, so keep dogs close. Golden and white-tailed eagles, otters, pine martens, red deer and harbour porpoises are all here, none of them guaranteed.

Clearances, concrete and carved stones

The village is young. It was set up around 1830 for people dispossessed when the Morvern townships were cleared for sheep, Inniemore among those emptied in 1824. The concrete terrace at 1 to 5 High Street, poured around 1899 for the Ardtornish Estate with beach stones and hydraulic lime, is a rare early Scottish example of the method.

Kiel Church stands a mile west on the road to Drimnin. The kirk that P. MacGregor Chalmers designed in 1898 holds a collection of medieval grave slabs, Iona-school work carved with a galley, a knight, swords, a horseman and a bishop, and a memorial to a MacLeod father and son whose ministries here spanned more than a century. Beside it the old parish church keeps a pointed arch of sandstone brought from Inninmore Bay.

Castles and a living harbour

Two ruins bracket the loch: Kinlochaline Castle at its head, seat of Clan MacInnes, largely destroyed by Cromwell's army and now a private home; and, on the Drimnin road, Caisteal nan Con, the Castle of the Dogs, a hall house of around 1670 believed to have been abandoned soon after a government warship attacked Jacobites garrisoned in it in 1719.

The harbour got its pontoons in 2011 and its shore facilities two years later; there is a gym and sauna at the hub, with e-bikes to hire there, while kayaks can be hired locally, and a native-oyster project is being reintroduced to the loch. Walter Scott called it "green Loch Aline's woodland shore," and from the white beach below the hotel, with the ferry coming and going, it is not hard to see why.