Malloc one

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I walked this route in two parts over a sunny but cold weekend early in March. It had been dry for a couple of weeks, which I'm certain made parts of this route easier than they might be. I walked Mallaig-Arisaig and Lochailort-Arisaig because I was staying in Arisaig and relying on a train service with three trains a day, but I've written the review from Mallaig-Lochailort, with a couple of comments about the reverse direction.

Overall, this route is ... mixed. It's in a lovely area, with some great long distance routes, but this isn't one of them. It passes some excellent scenery and makes the most of the limited opportunities for off-road walking along the way. It's the best way to walk from Mallaig to Lochailort, but has a lot of walking along busy and dangerous-looking roads. And it has one big problem at Lochailort: the last 100m of the route doesn't seem to exist. Other than that, it is superbly well plotted, I was grateful on more than one occasion for the accuracy of the plotting. Three stars because it does the job, but it does include some undesirable features. Would be two stars, except it's the only realistic route from Mallaig to Lochailort.

Mallaig is a busy (in summer, at least) fishing and ferry port. There are shops, pubs, hotels, restaurants, ferries to Skye, the Small Isles, Knoydart and the Western Isles. The route leaves Mallaig on the old main road and has some good views to Skye and the Small Isles. Then there is a dull section along the main A830, but it has a foot/cycle path, so is safe. Then it turns off through the sleepy village of Morar, where the hotel kindly served me a coffee even though they weren't technically open yet. In Morar, you can admire Britain's shortest river, its deepest loch, and one of its whitest white-sand beaches. From Morar, the route follows the B8008 along the coast to Arisaig. The views are great, and it passes some excellent beaches, but the road is narrow and winding, with blind summits, blind bends, single-track sections and no pavement. 25-30 cars passed me on a quiet day out of season - in summer, that could be 5-10 times as many. Each time, I had to step off the road in case they didn't see me, or there was a car coming in the opposite direction so there wasn't room to pull out. Walking this road in high summer could be stressful. There are options: at low tide, you can walk much of the way along the beaches and dunes. At the lowest (spring and neap) low tides, you can walk off-road pretty much all the way from Tougal to Arisaig with only a bit of wading. You can also cycle or walk the main A830, which has a foot/cycle path for the entire section from Mallaig to Arisaig, and is therefore bizarrely safer than the B-road.

Arisaig is a lovely village nestled at the head of Loch Nan Ceall. There is a pub/hotel, a restaurant-with-rooms, at least two cafes, a small but well-stocked Spar, public toilets, a marina, ferries to the Small Isles - and Britain's most Westerley railway station. Stock up here for the rest of the walk, it's the last place you can do so. The route goes through Arisaig, turns down the Rhu Road and into the Strath of Arisaig. This is a circular walk (known to the locals as Round the Glen); the route plotted in Slow Ways goes through a farmyard and there are often livestock. It's perfectly acceptable and safe, but nonetheless I prefer to walk on down the Rhu Road and take the main drive into the farm house (marked Glen Cott in OS Maps) instead. The route from Glen Cott follows a burn and is a lovely walk through a wooded valley on a rough farm track, but perfectly easy to follow. I think a mountain bike would manage it, but a road bike would be better advised to use the A830. After a couple of miles, it slips through (or round) a set of green gates and back onto a tarmac road. The plotted route takes you through the grounds of Arisaig House and Borrodale House, but there are forbidding notices which I decided to obey, so I took the main A830 instead. At this point, there is a separate foot/cycle path.

Whether you brave the forbidding signs or not, there is now a long section along the A830. At first, there is a foot/cycle path, but that stops after a while and you have to walk unprotected along a road which gets very busy in summer. There are more blind summits, blind corners, and some places with very tiny verges. I found it pretty stressful in March, I would do my best not to do this walk in July/August. The plotted route shows two turnouts off the A830, but I found both pretty off-putting. Both have static caravans parked across them, the second has a rough fence where I think there used to be a gate. You could probably make these work, but I like my walks more stress-free so I didn't. On the plus side, you pass under the narrow Borrodale Bridge, where there is a pedestrian crossing light - press the button, and the entire A830 stops so you can walk under the bridge! Further on, you pass a cairn commemorating the spot where Charles "Bonnie Prince Charlie" Stuart was rescued by a French boat and transported off to exile in 1746. Just before leaving the main road, you pass under the Glen Mama railway viaduct, not as well known as its cousin at Glenfinnan, but equally a marvel of late Victorian concrete engineering. It holds the remains of a poor horse who perished while building the viaduct - look up Glen Mama viaduct horse online for the story.

At Gleann Mama, the character of the walk changes completely. The route heads up Gleann Mama on a rough path, past a farm and alongside Allt a'Mhama. It crosses the burn at a ford, then continues on up the valley and crosses back over some stepping stones. Both ford and stepping stones were straightforward on a dry March day, but might be hard during wet periods (which are not unheard of around here). The glen was hit by a wildfire a few years ago, which has left it with some sadly dead trees, but the scenery is great: ahead as you climb is a remote highland Glen; behind you the views of Lochailort and its surrounding mountains improve with every step. From the stepping stones, the route leaves the glen and sets off across a remote-feeling moor. This section is magnificent but hard. The path is rough and varies from a 4-wheel-drive track to a web of indistinct tracks, some of which do their best to lead you astray. I would have struggled on this section without a GPS - but someone with better map-reading skills than me would have been fine. There are patches of bog, more fords, more stepping stones, also great views, and a real sense of having left civilisation behind, albeit briefly. I loved it. It's definitely hard walking though - if you're cycling or have restricted mobility, stick to the A830 - there is a separate foot/cycle path for much of this last section.

The end of the walk in Lochailort is problematic, I simply couldn't find the path despite searching for a good half hour. I was walking in the opposite direction, so I was looking for the path out of Lochailort. At the point it is plotted on the route, there is a thick bank of rhododendrons climbing a small cliff, topped by a fence. I followed a few leads that looked like possible paths, but they petered out. Further West, the cliffs climb to ~20m and I certainly wasn't going to speculatively climb them. Back at the station (where the path is shown on the OS map), there is a high wall (probably the continuation of the cliffs), more thick rhododendrons, a "do not cross the railway" sign and no sign of a way through. A day later, I passed through Lochailort station by train - to the North of the station, I could see the path across the moor, but I still couldn't see a way to reach it from the road. In the end, I walked West along the road for 100m or so and turned up the track which is marked on the OS map. This track curves back to the road after 300m or so, but at the apex, I found a faint trail which led me up alongside a burn, under a line of pylons and joined the route a little to the East of the spot marked "Ford" on the OS map. I'll try to go back sometime and follow the route in the Easterly direction to see if I can find the mysterious path at the end, but for the moment I recommend taking the alternative descent that I found: just beyond the ford over the Eastern arm of Allt na Criche, about 20m before the track takes a left turn, around grid reference NM766828 (I'll see if I can extract a more exact GR from my Strava recording), look for a faint trail South and connect to the looping track about 250m down the valley.

Lochailort is tiny and quiet. Unfortunately, the Lochailort Inn has closed, so you can't even have a well-earned drink. I'm not aware of a shop, nor anywhere to stay (although it seems likely there are B&Bs nearby). The station, through which three trains pass in each direction per day, is a request stop, you have to signal to the driver to stop if you want to get on. I was quite surprised when I first discovered this, but it turns out there are ~150 railway request stops in the UK.

Strava recorded 23 miles across the two days - pretty close to the advertised 20 miles when you factor in walking from my house to the train station (twice), faffing around in Lochailort looking for the end of the route and (ahem) getting lost at least once.

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