Castle Tioram and The Silver Walk

June 2009

During June 2009’s two-week Munroing trip with Richard, we decided to have a day off and accompany my parents, who were staying at the holiday flat with us, on our annual trip round Ardgour & Moidart – what we fondly call ‘The Acharacle Cafe Trip’ as there is a superb cafe at the small village of Acharacle on the way round. After filling our faces in said cafe, we always call at Castle Tioram – for those who’ve never been, it’s a pretty and reasonably unvisited castle (compared to the likes of Eilean Donan) on a nice sandy peninsula of a sea loch. Certainly you never meet coaches down there!

I’ve always wanted to get up above Castle Tioram for my photos as I’ve seen that Michael MacGregor’s superb calendar shots are obviously taken from up there. I didn’t know of any paths in the area but my father said there was an old fisherman’s route which goes to the next village. We went looking for it and found ‘The Silver Walk’. I think it follows an old route (possibly the one my father meant) but has been ‘done up’ – you can follow the path midway up the cliffs and either up the hill above the castle or around to Ardmolich – a walk of about 3.5 miles. Richard and I decided on the latter – unfortunately the path was too rough for my mother who’s had a hip replacement so she and Dad stayed behind and they agreed to pick us up at the other end.

From the road to Tioram

Castle Tioram

We set off and, within about a quarter of a mile and about 2 photos, I ran out of film! I ran back to the car and quickly changed my film and ran back after Richard to catch him up… The cliff part of the walk is extremely scenic indeed and gives fantastic views of the castle from differing angles and foregrounds.

Silver Walk Flora

The Sound of Tioram is Beautiful…

After that, you continue at sea-level along the loch shore on a well-made path and then leave the loch to go inland through a miniature pretty glen.

Very soon you descend out of this glen to the shore of another loch – at this point you’ve done about 2 miles.

This loch shore isn’t anything like as pretty as the other loch so we started to find the walk less interesting. We did however bump into a large group of Canadian teenagers waiting on a rock for the rest of their group. In complete contrast to our most of our teenage ‘yoofs’, they were very pleasant and chatty – made a lovely change from the usual abuse and sniping you get generally from kids their age here, but then you usually only encounter them in the towns!

We continued the walk and bumped into the two adults that the kids were obviously waiting for – they were equally pleasant. They’d had a small adventure in that they’d followed the wrong path and ended up on top of a nearby hill of about 500 feet. The path only went up and back the same way so the whole group had descended a very steep, rough, craggy, overgrown, pathless side of the mountain to get back to The Silver Walk again. Apparently the teens found it very exciting but the adults weren’t so sure (I wouldn’t have been either!)

Very soon after this you’re into the forest for about the last mile, at which point the walk gets decidedly boring apart from one viewpoint from where you look right along a sea loch to the Isle of Eigg.

The walk is a great little saunter for a day-off but it’s probably better to go up the hill after the cliff walk and back over the top to Castle Tioram – we’re going to do it that way next time.

On one visit, we’d just completed a walk around the castle and got back to the car just in time to miss the most horrendous thunderstorm and torrential rain – it made the castle look very atmospheric though!