A day out to Smirisary Village and Beach near Glenuig, Lochaber
Yesterday, we all piled in the car and drove the 33 miles from Fort William to Glenuig, on a mission to discover the ‘lost village’ of Smirisary.
As lost villages go, Smirisary isn’t actually all that lost at all. In fact, head in the right direction, and you’ll practically trip over it. The ruins of an old crofting community are a popular spot for walkers, and some of the buildings have even been sympathetically restored over the years.
Getting to the start of the walk is simple enough – just follow the road past the excellent Glenuig Inn and keep going until it stops, where you’ll find a small parking area. There were quite a few sheep roaming around when we arrived, so we clipped the dog on the lead and followed the rough path in what we hoped was vaguely the right direction.
It has been a summer of pretty torrential rain, and the path alternated between wet rocks and even wetter mud, but in no time at all we spotted the first of the old homesteads, and were presented with the view below.
Not bad, eh? Considering it was an overcast day, the views across to Rum and the Small Isles were pretty spectacular. On a clearer day, when the rain isn’t threatening to pour down and the wind isn’t cutting through you like a knife, it would be something really quite special.
From the spot above we headed left, following the path down the hillside towards the shore. The recent heavy rainfall had made stretches of the path very slippery underfoot, but after only a few hairy moments we came across some of the other remains of Smirisary.
Another mile or so of walking takes you to a stunning white beach looking across to Eilean Coille, but with the rain starting to fall and none of us having remembered to bring the waterproofs, we headed home, vowing to come back when the sun is shining.
When not covered in mud, this would be a relatively easy walk for people of all abilities. If you do decide to try it out for yourself, don’t forget to stop off at Glenuig Inn and sample some of their delicious smoked produce from their own smokehouse. I recommend… well, all of it.
For more information on the walk, including a downloadable GPS route, or to find out about other walks in Lochaber and the Highlands, click here.
Check out some of the images from the day below.
This blog post was originally written and posted online in July 2015 by the same author. It has been lightly updated for 2024. No weather references have been changed, because Summer 2024, it turns out, is just as wet as Summer 2015 was.
