Loch Duich with Five Sisters Mountains panorama

Glen Roy, near Fort William on Scotland’s west coast, famously bears clear traces of the ice age. The ‘parallel roads of Glen Roy’ are evidence of  the changing shorelines of a great loch, enclosed at different levels by the ice of advancing glaciers.

So much for the mundane and scientific! To our ancestors, these were tracks used by the great giant Fionn as he went about his hunting. Fionn built the Giant’s Causeway on the north east corner of Ireland, by which he came safely to Scotland’s west coast. He and his warrior band, known as Fingalians, were great hunters – killing up to 600 red deer in one day, it is said. As a result he left his name scattered about the less accessible parts of the west highlands: Fionn Bheinn towers above Achnasheen, ‘the place of storms’, and Fionn Loch, hides in the hills above the enchanting Loch Maree.

But even if Fionn’s name is lost in the mountains, one of his followers, Reithe, is immortalised in the narrows of Kyle Rheithe or Kyle Rhea, where Skye, the well-named  ‘misty isle’ comes closest to the mainland. It was over this short and turbulent stretch of water that the Fingalians had to jump when hunting on Skye (even now Skyemen will show you the footprints made when they took off on the return).

One day the band had to come back urgently (having heard the screams of a woman in distress), all landed safely except Reithe who missed his footing, fell back into the fast flowing waters and was drowned. Hence his name lives on. Many centuries later in 1840 the tide was still racing and the writer Hugh Miller recorded that he navigated the straits in sailboat - though navigating may not be the right word: “on we swept in the tideway, like a cork caught during a thunder shower in one of the rapids of the High Street”.

Yet it was through these waters at slack tide that cattle were swum the 600 yards from Skye in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries – up to 8,000 per annum. An Agricultural Survey of Inverness-shire of 1813 describes the method.

The drovers purchase ropes which are cut at the length of 3 ft, having a noose at one end. This noose is put round under the jaw of every cow, taking care to have the tongue free…All the beasts destined to be ferried together are led by the ferryman into the water until they are afloat which puts an end to their resistance. Then every cow is tied to the tail of the cow before, until a string of 6 or 8 be joined. A man in the stern of the boat holds the rope of the foremost cow. The rowers then ply their oars immediately.

The community of Glenelg on the mainland side of the strait was such a bottleneck of bovine traffic at this time that it developed into a thriving small community of drovers, inn-keepers, hawkers, blackmailers and bankers. So much so, that when in 1717 the government decided to build four new barracks at ‘important crossroads in the Highlands’, Glenelg was one of the sites chosen. The barracks, known as Bernera (as the government disliked palindromes), still stand bleak and somewhat ghostly, overlooking the crossing.

The building was due to be finished in 1718, and had that been achieved the garrison would have been ideally placed to put down the Jacobite rebellion of 1719 which was centred on the nearby Eilean Donan Castle. However building matters were much the same then as they are now and it had taken over a year for the government to agree a fair price for the purchase of the ground! Fifty years on, the Jacobite threat had receded and the garrison was drastically reduced. Visiting in 1786, John Knox recorded that he had been entertained at Bernera Barracks by the “the commanding officer and his whole garrison. The former was an old corporal and the latter was the old corporal’s wife: the entertainment, snuff and whisky”.

Now, Glenelg is one of the most remote and most delightful communities in the Highlands, by-passed by the world (and by Fodor). A ferry, said to be the smallest in Europe, with a turntable turned by (mortal) man carries up to six vehicles and plies the narrows to Skye. And you will see that the story of the cattle being swum across Skye is no myth, for below you, as you queue for the ferry, is their exit point, a gradual ramp, neatly built to contain the frightened beasts and with stones laid laterally to give wet hooves maximum grip.

If you come to Glenelg, whether from Skye or over the spectacular Mam Rattigan pass, there are two essential stopping points. The first is to see the iron age brochs, perfectly round stone towers with double skinned walls, built without mortar and rising to 30 foot (until the government robbed the stone to build barracks). There is no precedent for these extraordinary structures, which incorporate rocks that would have tested Fionn himself. And though there is evidence of their being used until the Middle Ages, the building period for brochs seems to have been very brief  - from about BC 100 to AD 200. There are two brochs here, and they are the two best preserved on the Scottish mainland. (For a broch that is virtually complete you must go to Shetland, but that is another story).

Your final call is the Glenelg Inn where, should you wish to tarry awhile, Fionn and the old corporal and the broch builders will all become wonderfully confused! Here visitor and local alike pull up fish boxes to sit on by the fire  - or in the garden depending on the season. They put the world to rights or else enjoy some celtic music, drinking local beer and nourished by food that would be welcomed in the smartest city wine bar. Again, this is no myth, just a touch of the real Highlands.

Alastair Cunningham is the founder of Scottish Clans and Castles Ltd, a holiday company based in the Scottish Highlands. He has written two small books for the tourist market – ‘Scottish Clans and Tartans’ and the official guidebook to Dunnottar Castle. He guides many of the company’s clients himself, especially in the specialised field of clan lands.