ABSTRACT
Loch nan Trì-Eileanan Beag is not easy to find. The ‘loch of three little islands’ is only 100 m long, and it is deeply hidden between two dykes of gneiss bedrock (Figure 8.1). If you know where you are going, it is only half an hour’s walk from the crofting township of Wester Alligin, on the shore of Loch Torridon in the north-western highlands of Scotland. If you do not, it is easy to get lost amidst the identical craggy dykes, all running from northwest to south-east, all with burns and boggy grass between them. Suddenly, as you stand on top of the sheer face of one of these dykes, you see the loch with its water-lilies and its three islands, two of them little more than mounds of peat and moss. Tucked in below the cliff face are the remains of a bothy. It is only 6.5 × 3.5 m, a rectangular structure roughly but solidly built out of red sandstone blocks. A tiny peaty burn runs along its eastern side and heads down the last 20 m to the loch.
