Welcome to HOLIDAY West Highland - Discover the West Highlands

A Hundred Thousand Welcomes!

Author Holiday West Highland |

Your award-winning Holiday West Highland guide features some of the best places to stay and eat on the West Coast. Ranging from hotel accommodation to self-catering, food fair to seafood, you will find somewhere to stay and eat at your next port of call. Stop to enjoy an eating experience at Coast in Oban– claimed to be the best by Peter Irvine, The Barn in its lovely rural, quiet setting and the other hotels & inns to stay and to dine; cosy Whistlefield Inn on Cowal, friendly Galley of Lorne and Lochnell Arms both with beautiful views or stay at Ardvullin self catering on the shores of Loch Linnhe, something for everyone, covering some beautiful areas to explore. Plan your itinerary around the Loch Fyne food fair –one not to be missed!

Enjoy West Highland hospitality!

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Ceud Mìle Fàilte

Author Holiday West Highland |

In this special Year of Highland Culture we in the West Highlands offer you ‘ceud mìle fàilte’- one hundred thousand welcomes - to a land of rivers, lochs, glens and high mountains. Just as in any other year you will receive the warmest of welcomes to this unique part of the British Isles offering everything for culture vultures, sportsmen and women, children and tourists who just want to take it easy.

Any stay in the West Highlands is memorable – apart from its spectacular mountains and lochs scenery the area has award-winning restaurants, superb fresh food, varied accommodation including hotels, guesthouses, caravan parks, campsites, log cabins and hostels and fantastic nightlife with ceilidhs and traditional music resounding throughout the night. And that’s just for starters.

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Oban - Gateway to the highlands

Author Holiday West Highland |

ALTHOUGH famous as a holiday resort, with visitors returning year aft er year, the West Highlands’ main town of Oban is also an important ferry port and the major retail and administration point for surrounding communities. It offers everything for the holidaymaker, with its shops, its ‘bonnie bay’, plenty of entertainment and activities and stunning views. One of the first things to greet you will be the plaintive cries of the seagulls which float in the air above the bay. Queen Victoria loved Oban (Gaelic for ‘little bay’), deeming it ‘one of the finest towns we have seen’ and since the early 19th century the town has proved a popular holiday destination for Glasgow’s Merchant City folk keen to take in the fresh sea air and recharge their batteries.

They came by steamship in those days and a fine sight these vessels must have been steaming into the bay. Today it is easy to reach Oban by car, coach and train, making it a popular visitor destination, but it also serves an important role as the main town for its extensive hinterland, with its court, police station, auction mart and regional council headquarters. It also has a fishing fleet and important port facilities for such things as lighthouses, coastguard operations and fisheries.

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The Magic of Waternish

Author Holiday West Highland |

Waternish magic begins with the Fairy Bridge and the first spellbinding panorama of Loch Bay, Dunvegan Head and beyond to the Outer Isles. Though it boasts the oldest inn on Skye, Waternish is an example of how tourism can develop the local modern economies of the remoter crofting areas and today over 40 businesses offer first-rate services to the many visitors throughout the year who discover the delights of this unforgettable part of the island.
Most establishments are either available all year round or advertise their winter opening arrangements and times separately. Historic Stein Inn and the celebrated Lochbay Seafood Restaurant anchor numerous bed-and-breakfast and self catering facilities. Of the five four-star visitor attractions on the island, two are found in Waternish: Skyeskyns, Scotland’s unique exhibition sheepskin tannery and Shilasdair wool dyehouse are both high profile attractions.

Top-quality accommodation and hospitality facilities make this spectacular peninsula the perfect place for exploring the rich history and wildlife of the area, as well as the wide range of activities and visitor attractions on offer.

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Road to the Misty Isle

Author Holiday West Highland |

PASSING through Lochaber, with its fabulous braes, high mountains and huge areas of wilderness, you might think you’ve seen all there is to see of the magnificent west Highlands, but you’d be wrong. If you continue north along the A82 Inverness road to Invergarry and then north west along the A87 towards the Isle of Skye you will find an area of such unimaginable beauty you’’ll catch your breath at the sights that meet you round every corner.

At the small village of Invergarry is the A82/A87 junction where you can either turn right for Inverness or left for the Isle of Skye and all points north west. Shiel Bridge is an ideal base from which to tour the immediate area, visit Inverness, the capital of the Highlands, a couple of hours’ drive away, or go over to the island of Skye or further up the north west coast beyond Kyle of Lochalsh to Plockton and Applecross.

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Mull & Iona - so much to offer

Author Holiday West Highland |

TO VISIT Mull and Iona is to have, literally, a true taste of the West Highlands. With Iona being almost a stone’s throw from the foot of Mull the two islands are inextricably linked. A visit to both will give you a detailed insight into early Celtic Christianity and local history and culture. Mull particularly is well-known for its local produce, including cheese, and its wildlife holidays.

Children will love Mull for it is here that the television series Balamory was set - at Tobermory.

The ferry trip from Oban to Craignure, near Tobermory, doesn’t take long. They’’ll be thrilled to be in Balamory with its gaily-coloured houses. Tobermory also has plenty of bars, restaurants, cafe’s and hotels offering superb locally grown food. Any idea of dieting will go out of the window when you see the mouth-watering foods you can taste or buy. Mull and Iona are a foodie’s paradise and calorie counting will simply be a ‘waist’ of time.

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The ‘hairy Heilan coo’ (The hairy highland cow)

Author Holiday West Highland |

NO HOLIDAY picture album of Scotland is complete with- out a photograph of a hairy Highland cow. They are as much a recognised tourist symbol of our country as tartan, heather, kilts and bagpipes. Yet very little is generally known about these formidable looking beasts. Their true origins lie shrouded in the mists of time, a throwback to an age when a thick woolly coat, fierce appearance and strong herding instinct were required for survival.

Today, the faded yellow, rustic red or sometimes jet black coated Highland cattle are experiencing something of a revival, finding great popularity not only with a new generation of wealthy hobby farmers who purchase them for their looks and social status but Highlanders also fulfilling a role in land conservation thanks to their ability to thrive on low quality vegetation that more selective herbivores turn their noses up at. Highland cattle may be direct descendants of the herds of wild oxen or aurochs that roamed northern regions of Britain.

Certainly their breed characteristics are closer to wild animals such as deer than the modern cattle breeds commonly seen on today’s modern livestock units. Or can they trace their traits and bloodlines from a domesticated strain of cattle brought to our shores by Neolithic man? Recently genetic research would suggest that the most traditional of Scottish cattle are closer to livestock found in Syria or Turkey, regions which have been attributed with the first domestication of wild cattle.

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Lochaber and Glencoe

Author Holiday West Highland |

BEYOND Appin lies the district of Lochaber which is now widely regarded as the outdoor capital of the UK. Indeed, the facilities it offers the outdoor person really cannot be bettered in this country. With Fort William at the heart of this huge area, which takes in Glencoe, Kinlochleven, the Ardnamurchan peninsula, Britian’s highest mountain and all the glory of stunningly beautiful lochs and glens, Lochaber will stay in your heart for ever.

Streams tumble down its mountainsides, waterfalls crash down from great heights. The 92-mile West Highland Way ends at Fort William and the 73-mile Great Glen Way to Inverness starts at the town. From the central belt Rannoch Moor is the entrance to Lochaber through Glen Coe, one of the top ten sights in the world.

Driving down the A82 along this looming, glooming glen, you gain a sense of its sad history with the infamous 1692 massacre. Home of the MacDonalds, descendants of the survivors of the massacre still live in Glencoe village which has a small but entrancing museum, a shop, post office and community hall. From Glen Coe you can follow picturesque Loch Leven to its head at Kinlochleven.

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Lismore - Gaelic - Lios Mòr ‘The great garden’

Author Holiday West Highland |

The green and fertile island of Lismore lies in Loch Linnhe in a natural amphitheatre of the highest mountains in Britain. Ben Nevis is clearly visible to the north and the wild granite of Morvern to the west, but Lismore is always a surprise in the midst of this rugged landscape.

It is gentle and undulating; a rare spur of limestone, which gives rise to a profusion of wild flowers and birdlife. Long and narrow, Lismore is around 11 miles long by little over a mile wide, and its closeness to the mainland makes it a perfect day out with a choice of two ferries which both land within easy reach of some of the best places to visit on the island. Lismore’s fertility and accessibility has attracted people from the earliest times, and over the centuries they left a landscape rich in monuments making it a superb place to discover the heritage of Argyll.

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Appin - ancestral land of the Clan Stewart

Author Holiday West Highland |

The romantic and beautiful district of Appin lies between Loch Creran and Ballachulish on the A828 Connel Bridge to Ballachulish road. Bordered by mountains inland and seawards by Loch Linnhe it is steeped in history and is the ancestral land of Clan Stewart of Appin.

The Stewarts fought for Prince Charles Edward Stuart at the Battle of Culloden in 1746 where 92 clans- men were killed or wounded out of 300. The clan gravestone can be seen in the old parish churchyard. With its sheltered bays and idyllic scenery you’ll want to return again and again to Appin with its pretty historic villages. The lovely island of Lismore, only ten miles long, a stone’s throw from Port Appin and accessible by ferry from the pier and also from Oban, is well worth a visit.

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