Lochaline ( gd, Loch Àlainn) is the main village in the

Morvern Morvern, historically also spelt Morven, is a peninsula and traditional district in the Highlands, on the west coast of Scotland. It lies south of the districts of Ardgour and Sunart, and is bounded on the north by Loch Sunart and Glen Tarbert, ...

area of

Highland Highlands or uplands are areas of high elevation such as a mountainous region, elevated mountainous plateau or high hills. Generally speaking, upland (or uplands) refers to ranges of hills, typically from up to while highland (or highlands) is ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...

. The coastal village is situated at the mouth of

Loch Aline Loch Aline (Scottish Gaelic: ''Loch Àlainn'') is a small salt water loch home to fish, birds and game, located in Morvern, Lochaber, Scotland. Key features of interest are Kinlochaline Castle, Ardtornish Castle Ardtornish Castle is situated ...

, on the northern shore of the Sound of Mull. A ferry operates regularly over to Fishnish on the Isle of Mull.

Population

The current population of Lochaline is around 200 people. In 1930, some Gaelic-speaking residents of the archipelago of St Kilda were evacuated by Williamina Barclay and relocated to Lochaline. Many of them lived and settled in Lochaline, although with some difficulty. Lochaline hotel 2014

Transport

A regular ferry operated by

Caledonian MacBrayne Caledonian MacBrayne ( gd, Caledonian Mac a' Bhriuthainn), usually shortened to CalMac, is the major operator of passenger and vehicle ferries, and ferry services, between the mainland of Scotland and 22 of the major islands on Scotland's west ...

runs over to Fishnish on the Isle of Mull. The ferry takes only about 20 minutes, runs multiple times a day, and day trips from Lochaline are possible. A snack bar by the pier is opened daily, offering hot and cold take-away snacks and beverages for the journey. There is also an infrequent bus service, 507, operated by Shiel Buses - this runs Tuesdays and Thursdays to Fort William in the morning, returning mid-afternoon. Additional journeys are run as far as Ardnamurchan High School on schooldays only.

Facilities

The village's facilities include a grocery shop, post office, petrol station, hotel, restaurant, social club, marina, snack bar and public conveniences. Kiel Church Lochaline 2014

The menu of the White House restaurant includes ingredients which are foraged and sourced locally. The Lochaline hotel, with its beach, has views of the

Sound of Mull The Sound of Mull is a sound between the Inner Hebridean island of Mull and mainland Scotland. It forms part of the Atlantic Ocean. The Sound of Mull Project is a Scottish Sustainable Marine Environment Initiative (SSMEI) spatial plan of Argyl ...

and the ruins of the old Ardtornish castle.

Local attractions

The village is popular with

divers Diver or divers may refer to: *Diving (sport), the sport of performing acrobatics while jumping or falling into water *Practitioner of underwater diving, including: **scuba diving, **freediving, **surface-supplied diving, **saturation diving, a ...

, as it is close to the wrecks of the

, with several charter boats available locally.

Kiel Church

Set in trees overlooking the

, Kiel Church with a graveyard is one mile away from Lochaline. The interior of the 19th-century church is plain with a braced timber roof. More than 17 medieval carved gravestones are displayed in the church. They are a reminder of the late medieval flowering of

Gaelic culture The Gaels ( ; ga, Na Gaeil ; gd, Na Gàidheil ; gv, Ny Gaeil ) are an ethnolinguistic group native to Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man in the British Isles. They are associated with the Gaelic languages: a branch of the Celtic languag ...

associated with the

Lordship of the Isles The Lord of the Isles or King of the Isles ( gd, Triath nan Eilean or ) is a title of Scottish nobility with historical roots that go back beyond the Kingdom of Scotland. It began with Somerled in the 12th century and thereafter the title ...

. Designs include swords, ships and hunting scenes. Other fragments of medieval stones lay in the graveyard, including a six hundred-year-old cross. Kile takes its name from Cille Choluimchille, the religious cell or monastery of St Columba 'Of the Church' who travelled through Northern Scotland in the 6th-century A.D. with news of the Christian gospel and who built the first church here, as the tradition has it.

Ardtornish Estate

Ardtornish Estate spreads out around the bay of

. The gardens of Ardtornish House are open to the public and include native and exotic plants and trees.

Ardtornish Castle

The castle was one of the principal seats of the high chiefs of Clan Donald from the early 14th to late 15th century, but Somerled had a fortress here in the mid-12th century. Ardtornish was the hub of strategic sea lanes vital to him. Later, it was at Ardtornish Castle that

John of Islay, Lord of the Isles :''This article refers to John I, Lord of the Isles; for John II, see John of Islay, Earl of Ross'' John of Islay (or John MacDonald) ( gd, Eòin Mac Dòmhnuill or gd, Iain mac Aonghais Mac Dhòmhnuill) (died 1386) was the Lord of the Isles (1 ...

, 6th chief of Clan Donald died in the 1380s and from where his funeral procession sailed through the Sound of Mull to the island of Iona. The castle was probably abandoned around the end of the seventeenth century, by which time the Campbell Earls of Argyll had captured Ardtornish and the other Morvern estates of the MacLeans.

Walking trails

The area around the village contains a number of walking paths. These include the coastal walks (the Kinlochaline Low Road and Ardtornish Castle Walk) along the shores of

, a small salt water loch, home to fish and birds. Loch is the Scottish Gaelic word for a lake or a sea inlet.

Geology

silica Silicon dioxide, also known as silica, is an oxide of silicon with the chemical formula , most commonly found in nature as quartz and in various living organisms. In many parts of the world, silica is the major constituent of sand. Silica is ...

sand Sand is a granular material composed of finely divided mineral particles. Sand has various compositions but is defined by its grain size. Sand grains are smaller than gravel and coarser than silt. Sand can also refer to a textural class o ...

mine has been in Lochaline since 1940, when it was opened to replace sources of silica lost because of World War II. A source was needed for the manufacture of optical quality glass. In November 2008, the announcement was made about closing the mine. In September 2012, the mine re-opened under a new company Lochaline Quartz Sand Ltd, a joint venture between the Italian mining company Minerali Industriali and glass manufacturer NSG. The silica quartz and other minerals came from the erosion of the Scottish landmass. They were deposited on the shore of a tropical sea on

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a geologic period and stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately Mya. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of ...

shales and limestones in the middle of the

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...

period, 93 million years ago, at the same time, the chalk cliffs of Dover were forming. Frequent changes to sea level reworked the sandy sediment. Natural winnowing processes sorted the quartz from other minerals, separating grains of similar size. For 60 million years, this was protected from erosion by a basalt covering from the Mull volcano. Near the loch shoreline, today are fossil oysters, or

Gryphaea ''Gryphaea'', one of the genera known as devil's toenails, is a genus of extinct oysters, marine bivalve mollusks in the family Gryphaeidae. These fossils range from the Triassic period to the middle Paleogene period, but are mostly restric ...

, that lived on the shoreline of a tropical sea here 200 million years ago.''The Evolution of Gryphaea'', Stephen Jay Gould, 1980. The rocks in this layer are the same age as the

Jurassic Coast The Jurassic Coast is a World Heritage Site on the English Channel coast of southern England. It stretches from Exmouth in East Devon to Studland Bay in Dorset, a distance of about , and was inscribed on the World Heritage List in mid-Decembe ...

in Dorset.

Mentions of Lochaline

Author

Madeleine Bunting Madeleine Clare J. Bunting (born March 1964) is an English writer. She was formerly an associate editor and columnist at ''The Guardian'' newspaper. She has written five works of non-fiction and two novels (''Ceremony of Innocence'' will be publi ...

mentions Lochaline in her book Love of Country, published in 2016. In the third chapter about the isle of Iona, she writes: '''At the end of the road in Lochaline at a hut by the jetty, rock cakes and scalding tea were on sale for waiting passengers. As the small ferry pulled away, the sea was sparkling in the late-afternoon sunshine.

References

{{Lochaber Populated places in Lochaber Ports and harbours of Scotland Morvern