Eas a' Chual Aluinn

The Eas a’ Chual Aluinn was the bastardized Gaelic name of what has been widely reported to be Great Britain’s highest above-surface waterfall at 658ft (about 200m). The actual Gaelic name was said to be “Eas a’ Chuil Alainn” meaning waterfall of the beautiful tresses. The guide on the boat who pronounced it “es-a-KOLL-a-LOO-un” told me a different meaning translating into something like “the waterfall of the beautiful Glencoul”. Whatever the meaning and translations may be, it turned out that there were two main ways of visiting this waterfall – by trail or by boat. As you can see from this web page, I made the choice to do it by boat as the logistics and uncertainty of the long hike to get to the top of the falls wasn’t feasible.

From my pre-trip research, I almost tried to fit in a 5th night’s stay in Inverness just so I might have the possibility of doing a very long 13-mile out-and-back solo hike to get from the A837 road to the top of Eas a’ Chual Aluinn. But given that I had already set out to do another long hike to Falls of Glomach, making Julie and Tahia wait another whole day without me just didn’t seem very practical. Plus, I had been getting feedback from locals on the boat tour as well as in the literature that this was not an easy hike, and it could also be quite dangerous as it involved scrambling around the cliff-exposed top of the falls to attain a better view.

So in the end, we managed to arrive at the Kylesku Hotel (see directions below), then wait for one of the boat tours that tended to leave every two hours (10am, 12pm, and 2pm). We happened to join the 12pm boat since we had just missed the 10am boat tour by a few minutes. In any case, they wouldn’t run the boat tours unless there was a minimum of 4 passengers. Fortunately on the beautiful day that we showed up, there was way more people than that. Unfortunately, our daughter couldn’t go on the boat because they didn’t have life jackets small enough for her, and the boat was too small to dampen out any choppiness in the loch. So that was a real bummer, and it caused Julie to have to kill time with Tahia at the hotel’s restaurant while I went on the boat tour. I paid about 25 pounds in cash to go on.

The boat tour began pretty much as a loch cruise cruising about the Loch Glencoul where we spotted numerous seals (gray seals and the misnamed common seal) as well as some birds of prey that seemed to have been familiar with this boat. We also spotted many mussels clinging to the loch walls throughout this body of water, showing that it was a feasible industry as long as algal blooms didn’t conspire to poison would be consumers of them. In addition to the wildlife, we also saw a few abandoned houses or farms in the remote ends of both Loch Glencoul and Loch Beag as well as the beautiful landscapes that were revealed to us given the rare beautiful weather we had been experiencing.

As the tour continued on, we then spotted a few seemingly significant waterfalls. One of them seemed to have heavy flow as it was said to have come through a hydropower scheme before the high-flowing stream spilled into Loch Glencoul. According to my maps, this stream might have drained the Loch an Leathaid Bhuain so that might explain why the falls flowed as well as it did. As we got to the end of Loch Glencoul and into Loch Beag, that was when we started seeing the Eas a’ Chual Aluinn Waterfall, but what surprised us was that there was a companion waterfall opposite the valley. Although this companion waterfall didn’t quite have the volume of the more famous one across the valley, it might be fed from Loch nan Caorach so its flow might be more permanent than at first glance.

Indeed, overall this was a relaxing way to experience the stunning beauty of the Assynt Parish at Glencoul. With the combination of wildlife, landscapes, a little history, and of course waterfalls, it had all the makings of a really great family outing, especially on a beautiful day. I’ve been told that just a week ago, the guide did a similar tour under stormier conditions, and given the relative lack of shelter in the boat, he had to stand in the rain as the rest of the paying customers crammed near the boat driver. Nonetheless, there was no need to do the very long and arduous hike to earn a closer view of the falls though I’m sure that could’ve yielded a more intimate and closer-to-Nature experience than doing the boat tour. Now if only our daughter could have done this trip, she would’ve really enjoyed seeing all the wildlife, and only then would I say it could very well have been the perfect spontaneous waterfall boat tour.