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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nI started from Mallaig on my first Challenge, in 2014. It didn\u2019t seem like old hat going back there. One of the deckhands was Alastair MacKellaig, 69. He made and sold ice for 40 years, retiring nine years ago and taking his current job. Mallaig isn\u2019t what it used to be, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSome of the boys would make 500 pounds a week when the herring was here. They bought a new car every year. The fishermen\u2019s wives redecorated their houses twice a year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ferry serves several villages on the jagged coastline, mostly carrying tourists. There were a half-dozen Challengers on the boat. They\u2019re not hard to spot\u2014white, gray-haired, and dressed in orange. The Old Forge, a watering hole where Challengers sometimes grab a last pint before heading off, wasn\u2019t opened yet. There was a coffee shop doing brisk business. I stopped there for coffee and a scone. Another patron offered to take my picture as I maneuvered for a selfie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was going up and over some hills, with my destination the end of a \u201csea loch,\u201d a long fiord from the Atlantic Ocean. It would be about 2,400 feet up and 2,400 feet down, sea level to sea level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are a few views looking back. In one are two ancient graveyards near an old house and some new ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Soon I came upon something I remembered from 10 years ago. I\u2019ve seen a number of these in Scotland\u2014monuments that aristocrats have built to themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the Brocket Monument that was put up by Arthur Ronald Nall Nall-Cain, the 2nd Baron Brocket, in honor of his father. (My question: why not go for the hat trick and be Arthur Ronald Nall-Nall Nall-Cain?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second Baron Brocket was an unsavory figure. Here is Wikipedia on him:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Brocket became known in society as a Nazi<\/a> sympathiser.[3]<\/a><\/sup> He became a committed member of the Anglo-German Fellowship<\/a>, and his homes were used for entertaining supporters of Germany<\/a>. Brocket, who considered Minister for Foreign Affairs<\/a> Joachim von Ribbentrop<\/a> a close personal friend, was so enamoured with Nazi Germany, he attended Hitler’s 50th birthday celebration<\/a> in<\/em> Berlin in 1939 . . .<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n At the outbreak of World War II<\/a> in September 1939, Brocket continued to work for an understanding between Britain and Germany. He urged a negotiated peace settlement and tried to arrange talks with Hitler . . . However, Brocket was informed that the proposal to grant Germany control over Poland and Czechoslovakia was not acceptable to the British government.[5]<\/a><\/sup> Brocket was interned at the outbreak of war and his properties sequestrated by the War Office<\/a> . . . The house and estate was taken over by the British Army when Brocket was interned; it was used to train commandos . . . After the war, the British government returned ownership of the estate to Brocket. He ordered that anything which might have been used or touched by [commandos] removed from Inverie House; all the cutlery, crockery and toilets were dumped in the sea at the mouth of Loch Nevis.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n He was kind of an extreme version of Lord Darlington in Kazuo Ishiguro\u2019s \u201cThe Remains of the Day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rain came and went, never hard. Mist blew in and out, obscuring the tops of the hills and then revealing them. The path became a freshet of its own. It wasn\u2019t full immersion until the end when I had to go through sphagnum bog, but my feet got wet pretty quickly. What did I expect? My boots were \u201cwaterproof\u201d; it says so right on the inside next to the water stains!<\/p>\n\n\n\n I passed a ruin, but didn\u2019t take time to explore it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The deer can spot you from great distances. I guess that\u2019s why they\u2019re still around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the far right corner is the bog I had to walk across. And because the tide was in, I then had to go over the end of the land, not around it on the shore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I finally got to Sourlies, the camping spot. There was a bothy, but it had three people in it, and in any case I preferred to sleep in a tent. I pitched mine next to a man named Hugh, who\u2019d overtaken me late in the afternoon. (We\u2019d chatted for a while.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mallaig is a fishing village of about 850 people and about 50 active boats. Both numbers are greatly reduced from the old days. The herring\u2014the main catch\u2014are gone. Now the boats go after langoustines (large shrimp) and mackerel, among other species. About 3,500 farmed salmon are stunned, bled, and shipped out of Mallaig on trucks each day, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Our destination, 45 minutes away, was Inverie, at the edge of what was once a 17,000-acre estate.
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There\u2019s a lot more tourist activity there now than 10 years ago. Before our packs were unloaded there was a bucket-brigade to take crates of vegetables, bags of potatoes, flats of berries, and boxes of pastries ashore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
It was raining lightly. It was time to walk. I headed out of the village up a dirt road that, like so many, has a meticulously built stone wall along it. There aren\u2019t many places in the world where moss grows this luxuriantly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n