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Lochaber: A Historical Guide (Paperback)
Loot Price: R266
Discovery Miles 2 660
You Save: R40
(13%)
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Lochaber: A Historical Guide (Paperback)
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List price R306
Loot Price R266
Discovery Miles 2 660
You Save R40 (13%)
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Lochaber is a sparsely-populated area, remote but romantic, centred
on Fort William. It contains no mediaeval burgh, no major monastic
site, and for its size, not even many castles. However, it does
include the highest mountain in Great Britain (Ben Nevis, 4406 ft,
the deepest lake in Western Europe (Loch Morar) and the most
westerly point of the British mainland (Ardnamurchan Point). Daniel
Defoe described it as a 'mountainous barren and frightful country .
. . full of hideous desert mountains and unpassable'. Much of the
land surface is mountain or bog, and its coastline is indented by
long sea lochs, while the interior contains some very large fresh
water lochs, the longest of which are Loch Shiel, at 17 1/2 miles,
and Loch Arkaig at 12 miles. The name Lochaber first appears in
Adamnan's Life of St Columba (written c.690). It probably refers
either to the top of Loch Linnhe, or to a possible loch, later a
bog, east of Banavie. Much of the scattered population of Lochaber
has always lived close to its long and sheltered coastline, and
until the last 200 years most communication was by water. One local
minister in the 1790s claimed, probably correctly, that Tahiti and
other Pacific islands were better surveyed than parts of the west
coast of Scotland. Only a few intrepid travellers came here before
the nineteenth century, when roads, steam-boats and then the
railway rapidly opened up the area to tourism. Attempts to
introduce new industries during the twentieth century had mixed
success, but the population, having declined for almost two
centuries, has now stabilised. Perhaps a better understanding and
de-mythologising of the past may help to develop a sustainable
economy for the future.
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