SGURR COIRE CHOINNICHEAN

Hidden from view until the ferry heads into the fetch of the Atlantic weather as it crosses the Sound to enter Cnut’s Fjord, Sgurr Coire Coinnichean dwarfs the single row of white buildings on the waterline. Seen clear against the sky, or wreathed in wisps of mist, in winter snow its west face is a forbidding sight from mid-loch.

With sea legs firm on deck, my eyes lift upward scanning these rugged surroundings. The mountains are unmissable. Norse and Gaelic tongues named this place: "Peak of the Mossy Corrie".

Bare moorland and grey rock merge with wind and tide as the boat’s wash makes way. This coastline was familiar to Scandinavian seafarers; its mountains rising out of salt water behind a widening bay, headwaters surging into a narrowing inlet, filling the glacial basin at the heart of the rough bounds.

Arriving at this northern landfall for the first time one early April with the rhythm of the tide at flux in a sea of sky-scape, light reflecting endless variations of mist and mountains, cloud and waves in a dancing dazzling show, soft air braced with raindrops, I drew breath.

My hill days are behind me yet these slopes accompany my wanderings. The peak is never the same, however often I see it. From the loch it stands sentinel above the bay; it fills my view when I turn around. The light on its summit changes with the seasons, all experienced in a day sometimes. I met a stranger who took this hill in his stride, in memory of a friend no longer with him, he told me, as our paths crossed. Moments of times past.

A mile east from the pier where the ferry drops passengers and baggage on tide-washed stairs, a first brush with the vagaries of wind and water greets me. Here the weather is master as it veers from gust to stillness, and the forecasts determine sailings. Facing west across the bay behind a sweeping beach at lowest water the island of Rum, and perhaps the Cuillin of Skye shape up in clear light. Evenings can be luminous as the sun sets below the horizon, reflections rippling the loch as daylight sinks across the water.

There’s history here. Going back to the first settlers as reports and records recall past centuries, in the presence of a mountain that makes itself known to others who come to this place.

“The Atlas of Scottish History to 1707" records a medieval parish at "Knudfjord”by 1300. The Macdonalds settled here; descendants of Somerled, King of the Isles, a great “Sea Lord” who died in 1164. Somerled’s nick-name was given to “Sourlies” (Sorley’s), now a bothy at the head of the loch, once a croft tenancy, then a “change-house” serving cattle drovers moving stock to the lowlands.

This territory belonged to the Lordship of Garmoran granted by King Robert Bruce (he of the spider) to Roderic the son of Alan MacRuari of Castle Tioram in 1309, passing down the family to Amie, sole heiress in 1346. Her marriage to John of Islay united the MacRuari ‘s lesser lordship with the mighty Macdonalds’ Lordship of the Isles whose medieval stronghold was Finlaggan,

Ranald, Amie’s eldest son inherited the lands of Garmoran in 1373,“including three davachs of Knodworath". Ranald formed the Clanranald branch of Macdonalds and on his death, Allan, the eldest of his five sons, became the 2nd chief in 1386. When Allan died “Cnudeworth” passed to his second son, a younger Allan, the first laird of Knoydart in 1428 - the Sliochd Alein’a Alein (Seed of Allan, son of Allan).

Allan’s inheritance was not of great worth. Sixty Pennylands, the equivalent of three davachs, roughly sufficient land to support a small settlement. Rainfall drains from these lands into the lochan of Gleann an Dubh (Glen of Black Water) and on into the Inverie river and Loch Nevis. Inverie -- .from the Gaelic “inver” the mouth of a river and "ie"/"aoidhe", a crossing-point between loch and land. Upstream, the river winds a deep bend, bog myrtle scents the air as your feet squelch ankle-deep. Here, near St Comgan’s church which once stood at Kilchoan, the laird’s dwelling place was sited. Low water exposes flood banks along the tidal stretch, when the river ebbs across mudflats below the beach. This riverside location would have allowed boats to moor alongside at high tide, or put to sea at low water by hauling across the shallows. It is sheltered from the prevailing south-westerly winds by rising ground and hidden from any vessels on the loch.

The church is long gone but a graveyard of carved stones remain testament to the presence of saints and lairds, seafarers and traders. In an oral culture, long before names were written down, Kilchoan’s graveyard cross and memorials bear symbolic inscriptions -- a sword and a galley – which commemorate long-buried lives of people who fought and died for their independence, showing how struggle and survival have been a way of life on Knoydart throughout the centuries.

I make my way across the seashore at low water, walk along the dry edge of the river, and imagine the open clinker-planked galleys beached along the northern bank now undercut by tidal creeks, where sea thrift grows on the mud flats and salt-marsh floats in the shallows while the tide is out. My mind is full of the Norse sagas, Celtic myths and folk traditions passed down in speech and song. Clans and clergy used story-telling, poetry and music to celebrate their lives and mourn their losses. Witness to all is the mountain. Like the graveyard slabs and the rock-bound bay, this mountain acts as a beacon to fire the imagination and illuminate the richness as well as the rawness of these rough bounds. It forms a lasting reminder of natural forces acting upon place and people.