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This is my favourite kind of weather, a cold, crisp and bright mid winter day. Daylight hours are short but more than make up for that in the quality of the light, the low winter sun revealing the contours and textures of the landscape. There are two other advantages to mid winter days, the landscape photographer doesn't need to get up at 4am, and there are no damned midgies!
This scene presented itself as I travelled south along the west shore of Loch Ewe, and just before reaching a small place known as Boor this dramatic view is before you. Looking over Loch Ewe, Poolewe village appears as a scattering of homes, apparently tumbled around the base of the dramatic Beinn Airigh Charr.
This view is deceiving however, in reality the walk from Poolewe to the lower slopes of Beinn Airigh Charr is about 4 kilometres, and to the peak of the mountain is about 9 kilometres, both as the crow flies, but rather longer by the meandering tracks that lead to the summit.
North-west Highland Place Names
The landscape of the North-west Highlands and the Gaelic language are intimately connected. Other languages have contributed to the richness of our place names, notably Norse, but the North-west Highlands have for centuries been a Gaelic landscape. In listing the meanings of place names I have relied on authoritative sources wherever possible. For further information about sources please refer to North-west Highland Place Names in the main menu.
Beinn Airigh Charr; Gaelic. Listed by Watson as Binn Airigh a’ Charr and explained as ‘hill of the shieling of the projecting rock or shelf’. Listed in Dixon’s ‘Gairloch & Guide to Loch Maree’ as Beinn Aridh Charr its meaning is given as ‘the mountain of the rough shieling’ from the following roots; Beinn, ‘mountain’, aridh (accepted spelling is àirigh), ‘a shieling’, charr, a corruption of garbh, ‘rough’.
Boor; A small settlement on the western shore of Loch Ewe. Both Watson and the Scottish Parliament propose it is derived from a Norse word búr-á meaning ‘bower stream. J H Dixon offers two explanations, that it is from a word containing the root boor, meaning ‘roaring’ because stags used to roar here. The other explanation is that it is from the Gaelic word buradh, meaning a ‘bursting forth of blood’.
There is a story in Dixon’s ‘Gairloch & Guide to Loch Maree’ regarding Dixon’s latter explanation. Before McLeod’s got possession of the Gairloch area (of which Boor is part) it was held by a tribe of Macbeths. On one encounter between the Lord of Kintail’s men and the MacBeaths one of the MacBeaths was shot by an arrow which pierced him “in the thickest of his flesh”. In making an escape, running with the arrow still in him, he ran down the brae to a place which is called Boora to this day. When he pulled the arrow out, a buradh, or bursting forth of blood came after it. A nice story, but as Watson is the pre-eminent scholar in the field of place names it is more likely that his less romantic explanation is the correct one.
Loch Ewe; Professor Watson said “that he had taken iu, with hesitation, from the Irish eo, thus ‘Loch of the yew tree’; the fact that Tobar na h-Iu in Nigg showed the article is practically decisive in favour of iu being there at least a Gaelic word. No Pictish name is accompanied by the Gaelic article. But the Ewe may be a Pictish name derived from the same root, or from a totally different one.”
Poolewe; Gaelic Poll-iù, ‘the pool on the Ewe river’; Professor Watson states that the village was called by the natives in his time Abhainn Iù, Ewe River. He also said that Ewe, Gaelic iu, he had taken, with hesitation, from Irish eo, ‘Yew Tree’, but concedes that it may in fact be a Pictish name.
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