You really feel in the mountains here. The surrounding hills seem so close that they positively beg you to leap up them directly from the deck. More relaxing, an evening stroll around the head of the loch is a delight. Kingairloch House and the surrounding estate seem mysteriously affluent, and everything is very trim for such a remote part of the mainland, even the little roads are well surfaced. I imagine loads of money was made from the Glensanda coastal quarry which the estate sold to Aggregate Industries in 2006.
And for boaties, the good news is that the Boathouse restaurant reopened in 2023, with six rather large and white reinstated moorings too (ph 07944 086881), but only Wednesdays through Sundays in 2026. The food and wine are as good as ever with a very pleasant ambience, albeit with quite leisurely service, which is fine. After all there only seemed to be one waitress and one chef.
Way back, in the 2nd World War, the Royal Navy had a top-secret testing site here for two-man torpedo-like craft with detachable warheads, and for midget submarines.
There is an old broken down graveyard — Kilbedane in Dail na Cille (Field of the Church) — by the moorings, but with some more recent cairns mostly to members of the Strutt family who must have been big round here. Indeed Mrs Patricia Strutt was one of the most formidable deerstalkers in Scotland it seems. She shot her first stag in 1930 at the age of 19, and her last shortly before her death in 2000. During the 2nd world war her mother, Emily Strutt, kept a bottle of poison handy to dish out to her employees in the event of a Nazi invasion (sealed in a lead box, the bottle is now at the bottom of the loch).
There is a walk to Kingairloch village along the road, but it is a very minor one. There you will find a surprisingly well-looked-after church, right on the beach (Camas na Croise). Mid 19th century. A fabulous view too. I wonder who keeps the brass so gleaming bright. I gather all the cottages are now holiday homes. Sad, but realistic.
