A lifetime of Islands: Island 251 - Eilean Mor, Fort William, Scotland

Thursday 9 October 2014

Island 251 - Eilean Mor, Fort William, Scotland

Eilean Mor, which means Big Island in Gaelic, is located at the point where the River Lochy meets the tidal Loch Linnhe between Inverlochy, near Fort William and the village of Lochyside, which adjoins the village of Caol. On the Ordnance Survey Landranger and Explorer maps it doesn't look to be accessible on foot but Peter Caton says he crossed to it from Lochyside in his book No Boat Required: Exploring Tidal Islands. However it wasn't very clear from his description exactly where he had crossed.

After walking out to An Caol I spent a while doing some research for the following day. After walking up and down Kilmallie Road and standing on the nearby Soldier's Bridge (a pedestrian bridge which links Lochyside to Inverlochy), I eventually spotted a little path that headed down the steep bank and onto the riverbed. Should anyone need to know, the path is almost opposite the entrance to Castle Drive.

The following morning, not wanting to try crossing to Eilean Mor on a rising tide, I spent the morning geocaching in Fort William and then visiting Glenfinnan to admire the viaduct, discovered a wonderful rose stained glass window in the church and ate lunch in an old railway carriage. I then drove back to Lochyside a couple of hours after high tide and within a few minutes I had crossed a dry river bed of large rounded pebble and found a faint path up a bank and onto Eilean Mor.

In some places it looked like the morning's high tide had covered the river bed. However the day I visited in mid September 2014 the tide wasn't a very high one and I think I could probably have crossed to Eilean Mor even at high tide. My conclusion is that Eilean Mor would only be inaccessible at high spring tides and/or when the River Lochy is in spate, as I think the channel between Lochyside and Eilean Mor would act as an overflow channel for the river.

The part of Eilean Mor that I visited was covered with mature trees - sycamore, ash, beech, hawthorn, rowan, alder, holly and silver birch. There were also wild flowers such as dogs' mercury and scabious plus bracken and gorse. More worryingly there was also a lot of what looked to me like the very invasive Japanese knotweed. I don't know who owns or manages Eilean Mor but if they don't act soon the Japanese knotweed will have taken over the whole island in a few years.

I also visited a separate smaller long thin and unnamed island on the east side of Eilean Mor. It is separated from Eilean Mor by another dry pebbly river bed. It had a few trees growing on it - alder and birch - but was mainly covered with broom, thistles, brambles (delicious blackberries) and gorse.

Having studied several old large scale Ordnance Survey maps online, it is clear that the shape and the location of the river channel has altered considerably over the last 50 years or so.