Loch Druich: the Lull Before the Storm

Last night, we found ourselves upon the shores of Loch Druich, that serene lull before the delightful chaos of Storm Ashley. One could not help but note the poetic irony of fleeing eastward from nature’s wrath, only to reflect on a past replete with violence.

Loch Druich, naturally, is more than just a postcard. It is the reluctant witness to history’s less picturesque moments. Up the road in Glen Shiel, during 1719, General Joseph Wightman, a charming emissary of British order, had a brief scuffle with the Jacobites, those tireless enthusiasts of lost causes. The outcome, of course, was predictable: the British won, and the landscape, no doubt grateful, bore the scars.

Before all that unpleasantness, there was Eilean Donan Castle, a noble pile even then, sitting smugly at the meeting of three sea lochs, Loch Druich being one, only to be blown to bits in a moment of military enthusiasm. Fast forward to the 20th-century, when someone with a passion for nostalgia decided to reconstruct it, not as it was, but as it perhaps never had been—a romanticised pile, more fit for a film set than a fortress. It now enjoys its twilight years posing for cameras and appearing on shortbread tins, whisky labels, and any product desperate for a Scottish veneer. A fitting destiny, really, for a place that once knew glory.