Lochinver

Pies, Port and Loch Inver

The Lochinver Larder sits beside the River Inver, close enough to the water that you can eat a pie at an outdoor table with sea-loch views. Ian and Debra Stewart opened it in 1986 as a deli selling takeaway sandwiches, and it grew from there into a major reason visitors come. The pies are baked from scratch with ingredients from the north-west, and the venison and cranberry was named Scotland's Best Meat Pie at the 2022 British Pie Awards. If you want something less obvious, the fillings run to haggis, neeps and tatties; chicken, haggis and peppercorn; steak and ale; pork and apple; and chestnut, mushroom and red wine. The current owner, John Snyder, says the first thing he ever heard about the place was that someone reckoned its pie worth a 45-minute drive on single-track roads.

That gives you the shape of the village. Lochinver curls around the head of Loch Inver in Assynt: the working harbour at the southern end, shops strung along Main Street, and more houses across the River Inver at the north end, where Highland Stoneware has its pottery. The harbour is not decorative. It is a key landing port for British and European whitefish boats, with a 2,400-square-metre indoor fish market and an ice plant that can make twenty tonnes a day. Large sheds and fishing gear sit alongside woodland paths and sea-loch views, and behind all of it Suilven's isolated dome pushes up out of the moor.

Local Tables and Hand-Painted Pottery

Delilah's on Main Street, run by Rachael Hawkins, cooks to order and works with the village butcher and local fishermen: langoustine tails in garlic butter on sourdough bruschetta, halibut bites with house tartare, crispy pulled lamb and potato hash, chicken and sweet-potato masala. "We feel truly blessed to have such strong support from our local community," Hawkins says. Peet's, on the harbourside since 2014, does scallops, mussels, a seafood platter, creel-caught langoustines and sticky toffee pudding; dogs are welcome on the outside decking but not inside. Inver Lodge opens its restaurant to non-residents, with two glass walls so every table has the view and langoustines and lobsters landed by Darrah Shellfish. There is a second bar, the Wayfarers' at the Culag Hotel by the pier, and An Cala café occupies the old Fishermen's Mission at Culag Park.

Highland Stoneware sits across the bridge, at the north end of the village. David Grant set it up in 1974 with David Queensberry and Grahame Clarke to bring studio-pottery quality to semi-industrial tableware production in the north-west Highlands. Twenty-three people now work here, hand-painting puffin, rockpool and Highland-cow designs among the ranges, and each piece is signed by its artist.

Paths and Community Ownership

The walking starts from the village itself. Culag Woods runs straight from the Culag Hotel through Billy's Path and a wishing tree to White Shore, an hour or so on rough ground. The River Inver and Glencanisp circuit follows the fast water past falls and salmon piers before opening onto Quinag, Canisp and Suilven. Suilven itself is a long day, seven to nine hours, for those set on the 731-metre summit; the gentler Leitir Easaidh trail at Little Assynt is suitable for families and pushchairs.

The land here has a long memory. In 1989 the 21,300-acre North Lochinver Estate was sold to a Swedish speculator for £1.08 million; when he went into liquidation in 1992, thirteen townships raised £300,000 and bought it themselves, and the Assynt Crofters' Trust now owns some 21,000 acres debt-free. The poet Norman MacCaig, who knew this country, put the question the buyout answered: "Who possesses this landscape? / The man who bought it or / I who am possessed by it?"

The Church That Came by Sea

The parish church arrived by an unusual road. It was built in Nairn in 1844-45 as an Episcopal church, then dismantled in 1902 and carried 107 miles by schooners around Cape Wrath to be rebuilt here and reopened in 1903. Getting to Lochinver yourself is easier but still a commitment: the A837 runs east to Ledmore, where the A835 continues to Ullapool; rail travel from Inverness reaches Lairg some 45 miles off, and bus route 809 links Lochinver with Ullapool. Inside the church now hangs a painting of the building, the schooners and the lighthouse, ringed by sixteen small paintings made by the children at Lochinver Primary School.