Drimnin

Lochaline

L.Arienas

L. Teaguis

Walk 1 From Drimnin by the Dorlin road.

As you approach the end of the road to Drimnin you will see a modern house that appears to emerge from a grassy knoll. Beside it is a signposted track to Dorlin. You will head generally NNW through open woodland.There are a variety of estate tracks which are not shown on the 1:50,000 but  keep taking the higher track while continuing to bear N and you will emerge into open country on to a clear well used track which, if you wish, will take you all the way to Dorlin and back.

What you will see.

Before 1800 the area you start in will have been intensely farmed for grain. There will have been few if any trees. The landscape you see now is improvement period tree plant and field delineation interspersed with land “gone to waste”-various types of non timber trees and bushes.

When you turn right, just before the entrance gate to Drimnin House, you follow an interesting short section of the original public road, grassy and not for a long time used for wheeled traffic, before joining a section now used as an estate track.

When you are out of the woodland you will see below you areas of oak wood on the slopes dipping to the shore. The survival of the oak woods on steeper rocky slopes may suggest that they were not, in other areas, suppressed by grazing pressure on their regeneration but rather by felling where there was a possibility of arable land use. I do not know the age of the oak woods, but size is a poor indicator. I have taken a branch section which showed twenty annual growth rings to the centimetre.

From then on the track is pretty flat and though the immediate landscape is not spectacular the seascapes out to the west and north certainly are.

The deserted village of Auliston is not visible from the track but is signaled by a patch of modern forestry which lies to it East. Descend from the keeping to the ridge and you will come upon it. Note the in-bye field banks which define the limits of the arable land. There is a smaller outlier of Auliston and some obscure stonework if you keep on down to the beach. This is a good spot for porpoises and such like.

You may continue towards Dorlin, it is a good track all the way, with unfolding views to the North and up Loch Sunnart, or turn back when you feel like it. Once again most of this can be comfortably biked, though not down to Auliston

Walk 2. - Drimnin to Mungasdall.

Just before the Mungasdall burn a track with a field on the left and a wood on the right, turn up off the public road.Less than a mile will bring you to an area of open fields.

What you will see.   

A pleasant walk or cycle through woods with a burn for company then a view of what I suppose is the second largest area of cultivated land in Morvern. The graveyard indicates the historic importance of the place and has significant historical associations.

You may consider following the path over the hills to Boon. If so you are on your own. I have heard of people who claimed to have heard of people who took the path to Boon.

Walk 3 - Around Funiary.

A track leaves the road on the right, as you head north west, a short distance after you cross the Savary Burn.

Follow this and you will eventually reach a point where it enters an area of rising woodland. Just before this a track branches off downwards towards the sea. Take this till you reach the public road and return by it to your starting point.

What you will see.

A Short walk or cycle through pasture land with woods rising  on your right to the north east. To the SW views over the sound to Mull. Just before  you turn downhill you will pass the interesting architectural confection of Lochaline House de-roofed, I think in 1910, though sources vary, to avoid paying rates. [Around this period a huge  number of interesting and sometimes spectacular Scottish buildings suffered the same fate.]

Walk 4-up the Savary Glen.

A walk through mature [if they have not felled them] pinewoods beside a burn.; not too enclosed.

Walk 5

Walks near Lochaline.

This is in a sense difficult walking country. The forestry has made any of the old SW-NE routes, at the very best, hard to find. This is exacerbated by the line of cliffs to the West of lochs Teaguis and Arienas. Unless, with exceptions suggested by walk A and the route East from Ardtornish House we are forced to keep to valley and coastal fringe routes.

North West of Lochaline the land slopes quite gently to the sea and there are portions of flat raised beach. There are also areas of less acidic rock that still support passable pasture and retain a managed appearance e.g. Around Funary, at Mungasdale and particularly on the SE of L. Aline itself. In previous centuries Morvern was “famous for corn.”    

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It has always puzzled me that the road into Lochaline clambers away up over the hillside instead of down the Aline then along the north shore of the loch. A much easier route and more dramatic route. Did the laird of the time think it would infringe his privacy, or to be more charitable, perhaps it was to serve settlements on the hillside.