I travelled 500 miles to Britain's most remote pub

Telegraph

03-05-2025

The gods, perhaps Norse ones this far north, were clearly looking out for us. As our boat zoomed through Loch Nevis, dolphins racing nearby, the weather was sunny, warm and calm: a royal flush in the wild west of the Scottish Highlands.
In truth, it could have been chucking it down, and I would have been equally as excited. As the white-washed cottages of Inverie snapped into focus, little milk teeth on the shoreline, my journey felt like Edward Woodward's approach to Summerisle in The Wicker Man or Leonardo DiCaprio's first glimpse of Koh Samui in The Beach. I was an outsider, arriving somewhere quite remote.
The Knoydart Peninsula is indeed Britain's 'last wilderness' and its only settlement, the village of Inverie, has a population of just 140. This is as wild and remote as it gets on mainland Britain: to get here I boarded a 90 minute flight, drove for three hours and then boarded a half-hour ferry, a journey of more than 500 miles. And for centuries, Inverie has remained a well-kept secret. But that could all be about to change.
'We're located between Loch Nevis, which means heaven, and Loch Hourn, which means hell,' said Costa Cotran, who was kicking off a small group tour of Inverie shortly after our boat's arrival on the peninsula. 'I'd say it's more on the heaven side.'
There is certainly a touch of Eden to this place. The village has a pleasant little tea room with views worthy of a watercolour. There's a village shop that sells the handicrafts and artworks of local creatives. I spotted a teacher skipping by with three young children, a quarter of the local school's total intake.
The village is off the national grid, relying on its own hydro-electricity plant, and there is a polytunnel and allotments where locals grow their own food. Veggies, for now, but soon fruits and berries too.
'We're trying to become more self-sufficient,' Costa explained. 'This way, we're insulated if there are difficulties with supply chains and getting things here.'
Large food orders arrive in Inverie on a boat called the Spanish John. For everything else – haircuts, dentist appointments – residents must catch a boat. Or, indeed, embark on a 20-mile trek over the mountains.
Costa, wearing a Tintin T-shirt and yellow wellies, led us into the hills. The Knoydart Foundation, stewards of the peninsula's 17,500 acres, has planted more than half a million trees in recent years, creating 50 per cent more woodland. There are also interesting regenerative initiatives in the pipeline, including talk of reintroducing cattle within the woods. I wondered how Costa ended up grazing these pastures himself.
'I came here on a school trip in 2019,' he said. 'I was 14 at the time, and I fell in love with the beauty of the Highlands and Knoydart. I came up every summer, then eventually finished college, and I moved here. My friends think I'm a bit mad.'
Now Costa is a ranger-cum-tour guide for the Knoydart Foundation. As our small group squelched through the mossy woods, he picked wild sorrel for us to taste, pointed out a carnivorous plant that swallows up insects, and a dead birch tree that has spawned five trees from its remains. He talked about lichen in the way that most people his age talk about online video games: 'super cool', because it is formed by two separate entities interconnected on a cellular level. Like people playing online video games, I suppose.
Incidentally, one of the members of our tour group was a well-known public figure. Costa, I later learnt, was oblivious to this fact until the celebrity left him a £50 tab behind the bar at the pub, and the barlady excitedly delivered him the news. To be expected, I suppose, for a young man who has no TV, lives in a yurt, cooks his food on an open fire, and is woken by birdsong at the crack of dawn.
The battle for Britain's most remote pub
It might sound like a heavenly existence, but Inverie has fought hard for what it has today. In 1852, during the Highland Clearances, 400 local inhabitants were given notice of eviction and offered passage to Canada. But 11 families refused, and this set the tone of events to follow.
Almost a century later, in 1948, the 'Seven Men of Knoydart' unsuccessfully attempted to reclaim back the land from the estate owner, the Second Baron Brocket (a notorious Nazi sympathiser). Their plight is marked by a cairn on the village high street.
Then, in 1999, the Knoydart Foundation successfully bought the estate, including the village of Inverie, in a community buyout which echoed those of the North Assynt estate (1993) and the Isle of Eigg (1997) before it. Thanks to the hard work of the villagers, which has seen the opening of a bunkhouse and a brewery, the population here has doubled from an all-time low of 65 to more than double that number today.
The latest chapter in Inverie's war of independence was for its best-known attraction, The Old Forge. Britain's most remote pub thrived as a tourist destination for many years, but for various reasons, the local trade dried up.
'Under the previous ownership, not a lot of people felt welcome to come in here, so they had to find somewhere else to go,' said Stephanie Harris, secretary of the Old Forge Community Benefit Society, who grew up in Inverie and returned here as an adult.
When the pub went up for sale in 2021, Harris and a group of locals decided to launch a bid. After considerable village consultation, fundraising and renovation, The Old Forge reopened in the summer of 2023 under community ownership.
'The first day we got the keys, we saw people we hadn't seen in five, six, seven years. It's ours now, which is extra special,' said Harris. And unlike under its previous ownership, The Old Forge remains open through the winter months, allowing for community events such as quiz nights and parties, as recorded on family-style photo collages throughout the pub.
'Winter is the time we can chill out a bit more and get the place back to ourselves, reset for the next year. We make an effort to do things to bring everyone together.'
Change on the horizon
As I sipped my pint of Fraoch Heather Ale, based on a 4,000-year-old Gaelic recipe using heather, I noticed there was something of an unexpected rush occurring in the pub. Out in the harbour, a small cruise ship had moored up and a tender boat was ferrying groups into Inverie.
That ship, the Hebridean Princess, has a capacity of 48. But as of this spring, far bigger ships with up to 250 passengers will arrive in the harbour, almost trebling the population of Inverie. A Silversea vessel will arrive four times through April and May for a whole day, but the jury is out as to how this will go.
'It'll be interesting. We just don't know how it's going to go, but we can learn from this one, and if anything needs to change, we can make it better for the next time,' said Harris. 'To be fair to them, they have been great. We've said they have to bring them in groups of 10 or 20, which they've agreed to.'
As I stumbled out of the pub, my brain partially rewilded by those 4,000-year-old ales, I counted a dozen tourists and locals sitting on the picnic benches – interconnected on a cellular level by an appreciation of drinking booze in the sun, looking out on what is probably Britain's most scenic pub garden view.
I felt a pang of regret that the village would soon be overwhelmed by even greater numbers of tourists. But then that thought quickly dissolved. This is Knoydart, where rebellion runs in the veins and the local mantra is 'Get Stuff Done'. Were the ill effects of mass tourism ever to land on its shores, I have no doubt what would happen next.
Essentials
West Highland Hotel in Mallaig, where double rooms start from around £165.