Creagan Inn

The inn sits at South Creagan, on the south shore of Loch Creran where the A828 road bridge crosses the loch on its way north from Connel toward Ballachulish and Glencoe. The bridge is the giveaway to the spot’s history. For most of the road’s life there was no bridge here: traffic crossed by ferry, and before the ferry by a longer detour around the head of the loch. The Creagan crossing was first carried by a railway bridge in 1903, and after the Ballachulish line closed in 1966 the bridge was eventually converted to take the road, opening to traffic in 1999. The inn pre-dates all of that as a coaching stop on the older route.

Loch Creran itself is a small sea loch flanked by oakwood on its south shore (the Glasdrum Wood national nature reserve sits on the slopes opposite the inn, with butterflies and a steep waymarked walk through the wood). At the loch’s head, a half-hour drive round, sits the Scottish Sea Life Sanctuary at Barcaldine.

Appin is a quiet stretch of country between Oban and Glencoe with no single anchor village; the area is better known to readers of Kidnapped as the setting for the Appin Murder of 1752, the case that sent the innocent James Stewart of the Glen to the gallows on Cnap a’ Chaolais above Ballachulish.

Booking and current rates at the Creagan Inn website.