Travelling to Scotland's Wild West - Ardnamurchan

Hello from Glencoe. This is probably one of Scotland's most popular and well-known tourist spots, but rightly so. It is very beautiful, but what comes with that are a lot of people, a lot of buses, and a lot of traffic. If you've seen my videos before, you'll know that I tend to stay away from these touristy spots in Scotland. I like to go to places that are a bit quieter, they're a bit less discovered, and that's exactly what I'm planning to do today. I'm going to be going on a trip for the next few days to explore the most westerly part of mainland Scotland. It's quite a wild and remote area. I think it's going to be quite different to the scenes here at Glencoe, so I'm really excited. Let's get going. I made my way from Glencoe to Coran to catch the Coran Ferry, one of the shortest ferry crossings I've come across in Scotland. I've always been interested to go on this ferry, but I've never been heading over to this area, so that's why I've never taken it before. But just over there I can see the crossing, and it is so short. You could swim it, pretty much. Using this ferry saves over an hour of driving via Fort William, and you don't need to book it. It operates every 20 to 30 minutes, seven days a week, and is an essential service for connectivity in the Scottish Highlands. I'd like to quickly mention about my Patreon page. Over on Patreon, I'm sharing uncut and longer versions of some of my YouTube videos, and there's a one-hour, 20-minute version of this video available to watch over on Patreon. Car plus occupants, £10. I wonder if it's more for a van. Bicycles and pedestrians, free. Or there's someone coming round and taking payments from the window of the car. Every ferry is so different because sometimes you go into the office, sometimes you pay in advance, other times they come and take the payment from your window. I'll be at ten, please. Okay, thank you so much. You take care now. Thank you. Okay, so £10. That was so fast. We're already here. It felt like about three minutes. I'm not sure what the exact length of the ferry is. I will find out and just share it in the video. But unfortunately, it was a very quick exit, and I couldn't get the footage. This is the ferry that I just got off. They started unloading the ferry really quickly, and my lane, we're off first. There's a little ramp, and then you can turn left, and that goes towards the place we're going. Or you can go right, and I'm going to take a quick detour to the right because there's somewhere I want to visit. My first stop after getting off the Coran ferry was Ardgower Ales, a brewery located around a two-minute drive from the ferry terminal. They are known for producing a variety of high-quality and award-winning beers. Their equipment runs on the hydroelectricity produced locally, and the names of the beers are in Scottish Gaelic. The owner, Fergus, introduced his selection of beers. So at Ardgower Ales, we've got 10 beers all together. They're not all available today. This one's called Eis Gael, which means white waterfall in Gaelic. Very light, easy-drinking, citrusy beer. Buch Beak, the little buck. A real goat who was born along in the village here that posed for a label. The summer ale, Single Hop Fuggle. This one is a milk stout, Banyan and Gore. So we've got a little goat drinking from the bottle on that one. Dark, nutty, satisfying. This is our IPA, Buch Ban, the pale buck. This one, Gore Ore, means the dun-coloured goat. My favourite. It's a sort of north of England style best bitter. This is our special lager for the summer of sport. So our goat's gone on holiday to Paris to win a gold medal. Balm Ore means gold medal in Gaelic. And this is our speciality product, Fionnann Iorna, wine of the barley. It's old-fashioned barley wine. Lovely to sip after dinner. Come to Ardgower and buy them all. Thank you. You serve food here as well. We do. Yeah, Friday nights we do pizzas by pre-order. We also serve homemade pizza on a Sunday afternoon. That's just arrived, we hope for the best. Or burgers other times. And we're shut on a Monday. I love visiting breweries and distilleries as I travel Scotland, so I picked up this one, the Bok Beg. Can't remember how Fergus in the brewery pronounced it, but this looks great. Now I'm going to head towards the Ardnamirchen. The area I'm heading to today is called the Ardnamirchen Peninsula. It's a remote and scenic area in the Scottish Highlands, known for its rugged landscapes, wildlife and beautiful coastal views. As I drove from Coran towards the Ardnamirchen, I could already start to feel the remoteness. I stopped at the Salen Jetty shop, which had great reviews online. I paid a visit to the village shop here and got a few items. So I got the best food in Scotland, potato scones. I also got some eggs and then I asked the man in the shop what's made locally and he recommended this shortbread. That looks really good. And also there were a selection of jams. I went for the rhubarb jam. The raspberry jam also looked really delicious. I saw that they also sold smidge in there. Now it's the midge season in Scotland and I've run out of smidge, so I got one more. I've so far taken the ferry and then I've made it here to the point called Salen. And from this point, the road down the Ardnamirchen Peninsula starts. Compared to this morning as I was driving through Glencoe, the amount of traffic, the amount of people, the amount of buses is much, much less over here. I don't even think I've seen a single tour bus, which is really nice. And it's exactly what I was looking for. Now that I've stocked up on a few supplies, let's continue on the road down the Ardnamirchen Peninsula. As I've been driving along, I've noticed so much woodland. It's really beautiful and quite unusual. In a lot of other places I've in Scotland, there's no trees and this is quite different. This looks like the distillery, the Ardnamirchen distillery. Wow. Fantastic. I'll be coming back to go to that. Most of this road is single track and I actually really enjoy driving on single track roads because you can go at a pace that you feel comfortable at. And this camper van doesn't drive very fast. I think the optimum speed is around 50 miles per hour. I'm not driving 50 miles per hour on these roads, but when I'm on a regular road, I feel that if I drive at 50, it ends up there's a lot of traffic behind. People are overtaking and I feel pressurized to drive faster. However, on the single track roads, I'm driving now at 25 miles per hour, which sounds very slow, but as soon as a car comes, I go into a passing place and let them pass so I can drive at a pace that I really enjoy. I can have a little look at the view. I can go at a pace that I don't feel pressurized to drive too quickly at. Really enjoying this drive so far. I've seen a few places to stop, a few picnic areas, but not many. I actually want to get out and have a look at the view, but there hasn't been that many places that you can stop so far. I continued my drive down the winding single track road and made a stop at a viewpoint. The Ardenhamirchen Peninsula is home to an ancient volcanic complex that formed over 55 million years ago. This volcanic activity created the distinctive landscape seen today. Ben Hyant, the highest peak on the peninsula, standing at 528 meters, is part of this volcanic system. I'm just parked up at this lovely viewpoint and the scenery is really lovely from this point onwards. I'm going to have a little bit of coffee that I've got left over from this morning and I'm going to try a piece of the shortbread, the homemade Highland shortbread. I wonder if there's a difference between normal shortbread and Highland shortbread. I don't think there is, although there's cornflour in this one. Is that a normal ingredient for shortbread? I'm not sure. Anyway, let's see how it tastes. It's so crumbly. I think it's going to drop all over the sofa. Anyway, let's give it a try. So crumbly, so buttery, really good. So behind me is Ben Hyant and over there, I was reading the plaque, that's the Isle of Mull. I didn't realise how close it was. Obviously, I've seen the map before, but you can see it really clearly. You can make out the electricity poles. This viewpoint is a great place to stop. You can see this beautiful beach. I don't know if there's any access. You might have to walk down the path. In the distance over there, I can see the remains of some houses or perhaps a settlement. And on the plaque in the car park, I think it mentioned that that was possibly a village that was cleared during the Highland clearances. These people were cleared and evicted from their homes to make way usually for sheep farming. From this point on, it looks like there's a fantastic road heading into the hills there. I'm looking forward to driving on it. It looks quite exhilarating and quite narrow. So let's get going. It is raining a little bit now, but sometimes I feel when it's It makes it so atmospheric. The previous video that I posted about driving down the longest dead-end road and there were a few people commenting that they'd like to do it on a motorbike. And I think this would be a really good road to do on a motorbike. Kilchowan? Kilhoan? Me Kilhoan. I might be butchering the pronunciation. So I believe this is the biggest settlement here. And from here, the ferry goes over to the Isle of Mull. And tonight, I'm planning to stay at a campsite here. And then tomorrow, I'm going to explore more of the peninsula. And that looks like the pier for the ferry down there. Kilhoan is a quaint village located on the southern shore of the Ardenamerican Peninsula. It has a population of around 150 residents. It provides essential amenities such as a primary school, post office, and general store. It's the most westerly village on mainland Scotland. Okay, I can see some camper vans. I think I've arrived at the campsite. I do think there was one back there as well, but it doesn't have showers. And I like to go to campsites that have showers. I think this is it. Entrance. I wonder if there is space. Okay, reversing into this camping spot here. Okay. Oh my gosh. That was a bit hairy. We're in. We're in. Oh my gosh. He said to stay on the upper one. You can do anything if you try. Okay. Make sure the handbrake is on. I had a really great night of sleep here at the Ardenamerican campsite. The campsite was full last night and it cost me £12 to stay here overnight without electric hookup. To find this wonderful campsite, I used an app called Campy. And I know some of you watching already use this app because I've seen you mention it in the comments before. If you haven't heard of Campy before, it's a really great app that can help you find the best paid camping spots all over Europe. All the locations, photos, and reviews on the app are added by other app users. There's lots of information available about each campsite. For example, how much is it per night? Is it pet friendly? Do they have showers? And what other amenities that the campsite offers. A feature on the app that I really like is called My Trips. And you can save the campsites that you plan on going to. And then within My Trips, it'll create a route or a map for you so you can visualize what your trip will be like. I find this app really useful for finding places to stay overnight. I tend to stay at paid campsites around 50% of the time and Campy is a great resource for finding places to stay. I think you'll really enjoy it too. And you can download it for free now by clicking the link in the video description below. Thank you to Campy for making it possible to film this video today. Now let's explore more of the Ardenham Merchant. I'm now going to be heading even further west. And on the western side of the peninsula, there are a few more sites to see. I've heard that the road from this point onwards becomes quite windy and quite hairy. But to be honest, I quite enjoy driving on roads like these. So let's get going. I've pulled up here at a place called the Community Garden Shop and it looks like an honesty shop. Let's go in and see what they have. Oh, there's some lettuce, some herbs. That seems to be all there is. I wonder if there's anything in here. No, these are usually strawberries. Seems like there's nothing available today or perhaps it's sold out. I continued my drive along the long single track road and spotted the top of the lighthouse in the distance. At the lighthouse, there is a great community owned cafe and I enjoyed some lunch. I'm now waiting for my tour of the lighthouse. The tour costs £9 and there seems to be a tour running every 30 minutes. This lighthouse is said to be based on the Egyptian style of lighthouses, which is quite unique and I think it's the only one of its kind in Scotland. The lighthouses in Scotland are quite iconic. They're usually white and yellow, but this one looks quite different. Looking forward to seeing inside. I'm going to have a look at the views here before the tour starts. The Ardenberghan lighthouse, completed in 1849 and designed by Alan Stevenson, stands 36 metres tall and is a key navigational beacon on Scotland's western coast. Originally operated by lighthouse keepers, it was automated in 1988. The lighthouse is owned and maintained by the local community through the Ardenberghan Lighthouse Trust. I'm now out here on the balcony of the lighthouse and just behind me is the Isle of Muck, where I recently spent a week. And then behind the Isle of Muck is the Isle of Egg. When I was on Muck, I could see the Ardenberghan peninsula when I was doing hikes, so it's funny to now be on the other side. So the man here at the lighthouse says that you can usually see rum and then also the Outer Hebrides and the Isle of Skye on a clear day. So in the distance there is the most westerly point, so I'm going to head over there next. I really enjoyed the tour. It was really good, really worthwhile doing. I learned a lot about how the lighthouse was operated here, what the life was like for families at the time. Now I'm in the engine room and the engines in here, I think he mentioned they were used to power the foghorn back when it was in operation. There's a really strong smell here of fuel. I'm not sure if it's fuel or what it is. Everything in here looks so old. I'm leaving the lighthouse behind me in the distance here and I'm now setting off on foot to the westernmost point of Scotland. It's also the westernmost point of mainland Britain and I know some of you from Scotland are going to be commenting straight away, Ruth, you're Scottish, don't call it mainland Britain. Well, last time I checked, Scotland was still part of Britain. I'm just stating the facts. So it's over there. The lady in the cafe told me it takes around 30 to 40 minutes to walk and there is a faint path. So she told me where to start from. I'm going to head down to this layby and the path starts from there. So I've got to the point here that is the layby and it looks like there is a faint path. So I'm going to head down there. The lady in the shop also told me that there's two burns that you need to cross. It looks like one of them is just here. The path is pretty rubbish to be honest. It's very boggy and it's starting to become quite difficult to follow. I keep losing the path. So I think only do this hike if you have proper shoes because if I didn't have my hiking boots, definitely my trainers would be soaked. This is the path here ahead. So it's very faint, but you can make out the path, but you need to pay attention to make sure you don't go off track. I can see a little cairn in the distance that might be the westernmost point. And there's this lovely little beach just behind me. In the distance there are a few sailboats. I've seen quite a few sailboats today. It's a wonderful day to be out sailing on the west coast of Scotland. I think I've made it now to the cairn to the westernmost point of Scotland. Yes! This is the westernmost point of mainland Scotland. While I was sitting admiring the views, I thought to myself that the Ardnamurchan feels like an island rather than a peninsula. The meaning of Ardnamurchan in Gaelic is the height of the seals. Even though this is the westernmost point of mainland Scotland, the actual westernmost point of Scotland is an incredibly interesting place. It's a very small rock called Rockall, and I think it takes around 17 or 18 hours to travel to this rock from the Outer Hebrides. So it's a really long journey to get there. Somewhere out there in the distance. Now I'm heading to a place called Sanna Beach, and this beach looks unreal. And now the weather has come out, I think it's going to be absolutely stunning. I've now arrived here at Sanna Beach, which is said to be the most beautiful beach here on the Ardnamurchan Peninsula. The drive here was really incredible along the single track roads. There were lovely views of the hills on each side, and I've got my swimming things ready. The weather is looking good, but I think there's a 50-50 chance that I'll actually go in. Let's see. So to walk down to Sanna Bay, I need to go through these sand dunes. And there is a path, but it's quite a little walk from the car park actually. Maybe five, ten minutes. The car park is not directly at the beach. Wow. The beach has just come into view in front of me. This is incredible. Absolutely incredible. I'm set up here with my lovely towel. Wow. This is unreal. This beach is heaven. The sun is out, the water is blue, the wind is blowing. This beach is definitely up there with one of the most beautiful beaches that I've seen in Scotland. A lot of people say that Outer Hebrides has the most amazing beaches, but I haven't been there yet. But this is absolutely beautiful. I'm not going to go in swimming. There might be a chance later on to go in swimming elsewhere. So I'm going to hold off and wait until then. So I'm next going to catch up with some friends who live here on the Ardnamurchan. Actually, I'm calling them my friends, but we've never met in real life before. They're my online friends. And this will be the first time we're meeting in real life. So they live here on the Ardnamurchan Peninsula. And I'm really interested to find out what it's like living in such a remote and wild place. They live in a camper van that they've converted themselves. And I'm going to go to the spot that they're parked up at and also stay the night there with them. Hi, guys. Nice to meet you. I'm Ruth. Hello. Nice to meet you. I feel like we should give you a hug. Lovely to meet you, Callum. Nice. Lovely to meet you, Roxanna. Picked a good day for it. Yes, the weather's amazing. And I'm so excited to hear about what it's like living here on the Ardnamurchan Peninsula. The reason I found out that Roxanna and Callum are living here is because I watched their YouTube channel. It's one of my favorite YouTube channels. And it's called Ardview Vanlife. Vanlife? Yes. Creative name. You make really incredible videos about your life here on the Ardnamurchan Peninsula. I think we just try to show a real vanlife kind of experience. Vanlifers don't necessarily travel all the time. So we use our van so we can live here. Yes. We do a lot of traveling, but on the whole, it's just about living in this what we think is an incredible place. Yes. I think we got this van five years ago in 2019. And then during the first lockdown, we renovated it. And then we ended up moving to Islay. So we lived there in a van for a year and a half. And we went traveling for six months and then we came over here. So we've been here in the Ardnamurchan now for over a year. And yeah, it feels like a nice new home. And I think we settled quite well. We both work locally. And it's just a really nice community. It seems a lovely place to live. Chill. Yeah. And you work in the whiskey industry? Yes. I work in marketing for the local distillery, Ardnamurchan distillery, which is nice because it's an independent distillery. So pretty chill. You can put your mark on things pretty easily. And most importantly, stuff is quite good. It might be a little biased, but it's very good stuff. Cheers guys. Oh, we forgot to say cheers. Lovely to meet you. So nice to meet you. Finally. I feel like we know you already. I know we've tried to meet up a few times, but it just never worked out. You guys were down in Dumfries and Galloway and then I was up here in the UK. This is like the third time we've tried to meet up. What's it like living in such a remote place like this? Rocks, you're up. Yeah. I definitely think that there's some challenges. And I think where the peninsula is located, you actually feel like you're living on an island because we are right at the back of the peninsula. And so the closest place, for example, to do grocery shopping for us is Fort William, which is two hours drive. Or the closest place would be Tobermory. So we would take a wee ferry over to Malw, which is half an hour long. So you go to an island. You go from the mainland to an island to do your grocery shopping. Exactly. Exactly. It's just a week off, but yeah, it does the job. Everyone kind of knows each other as well. So you feel a lot more safe. And I think, you know, we've been in situations where the van broke down or something happened and we knew that we could rely on people that we've known only maybe for a few months. It could be a few hours if the van has rolled into a fence, like it did one time. And people are always, they're quite quick to laugh at you, but they'll help you. It's really good. Our only neighbors are deer, sheep, cows. And then we have often white-tailed sea eagles flying over. One time we've seen dolphins literally just swimming in the water from the van. So we're just surrounded by wildlife. It's pretty nice. I'm still waiting for orcas. I need to see a whale. Maybe one day. Yeah, that would be amazing. How do you like it? Yeah, it's lovely. First impressions, eh? You know, it's not what I expected. I think because it was on the mainland, I thought there'd be the shops and more people living here, but actually it really does feel like an island, like you described. So you've got your van, but you've also got a car. Yes. Yeah. That's a good idea. It just makes it a lot easier to get to work, do the shopping, blah, blah, blah. So yeah, we have the wee car and then the van is usually permanently, kind of semi-permanently parked. But we do like to take the van as well, quite often just to mix things up. The good thing about having the van parked here all the time, we have like an awning on the side. I can show you. Oh yes. Come around. This is our conservatory. Yeah, conservatory, not awning. Fantastic. Conservatory. Obviously we both live here and we have lived in the van like full time for like two years. And people are always like, how the hell can you live in a van with two people for two years? But part of the reason is space, you know? Okay. It's a small space inside, but we have outside and we have our conservatory. We also, anytime we have any friends staying over, they can stay in like an extended tent. Let's show you the inside because the inside is the best part. Let me turn on the lights and make it look pretty. Wow. Already love the color scheme. Welcome to our home. Please don't record the dishes. Wow. Welcome to our house. This is our house. It's pretty unique, I think. Yeah. Yeah. So we did everything ourselves. We bought it June, 2019. And then we spend the next year converting it ourselves. So pretty much most of the things are made from scratch. And a lot of things we use are upcycled as well with the whiskey bottles. And it just, it feels like home. It's really nice. One thing that's pretty unusual about a van is we have our log burner. Oh yes. Which some people think is a bit bonkers. Yeah. That's such a good idea for Scotland, especially. Yes. And in the winter. Of course we spend all winter in here. We've been in here with like two foot of snow outside. We've had it in the, I think minus 14 was the coldest we've been in the town. Scotland. Yeah. That was up near Dingwall. Dingwall. Aye. You got a whiskey cabinet there in the back there, is it? We've prioritized space. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. We do have a whiskey cabinet with, you know, obviously some Ardermarken. And the bed is up there as well. For folk who maybe watch Ruth's channel who don't, who do van life, there's maybe a good chance you've not seen a bed set up like this. We haven't seen it in another van before. Came out of my head, but we just simply put a double mattress down. This slides out and then we have some ladders and you know, a nice double bed, which is very, very comfy. That ladder looks really interesting. It's not the most comfortable. No. It's made of old whiskey bottles. Wow. Did you make it yourself? Yeah. So that is old like, um, barrel staves. Because we built the van during lockdown, like all the builder's merchants and stuff were shut. So we couldn't get our hands on timber and wood. And so we were just using stuff that was lying around. And the best thing about the bed is you can just fling everything up there. Forget about it. Forget about it and just everything disappears. It's a really creative idea because when you're sitting down, you don't actually need that headspace above you. Exactly. Yeah. And you have a bathroom as well. I'm not going to open the bathroom. It's a wee bit messy. It's like a cloakroom as well. We have just stuff and then we have a compostable toilet and a shower. So it's good. And the water, we get it from a burn just up the roads. So the water is just flowing from the hills. We have everything sorted. Yeah. Pretty good. I think it's the nicest van I've seen. It's so cosy, so welcoming and it's so unique. And we've got whisky. The next morning before leaving the peninsula, Callum gave me a tour of the Ardnamurchan distillery. Welcome everyone to this small but new distillery. One of the most westerly distilleries in mainland Scotland. We started distilling here way back in 2014. So this is a big year for us because we're just about to turn 10. But it'll be fun. I'll show you around and kind of give you an insight into what we do here at the distillery. But the major things that make Ardnamurchan Ardnamurchan is first of all, the people who work here. We've got a great small team here putting their hearts and souls into making what we think is a fantastic whisky. And we're also making whisky in pretty much one of the most sustainable ways you can. And it's a big push to what we do. So we are kind of proud of our environmental credentials and the fact we use biomass to power distillery from local planted forestry. We harvest that, we take it two miles past the distillery, turn it into wood chip and then bring it back here. And then we have a whole rewilding plan to reforest this part of Scotland, which is fun. We have hydropower on our water supply and we have solar panels on the roofs of our warehouse. So pretty much self-sufficient here, which is a big part of what we do. We do that because it makes sense. It means we don't have to rely on things coming along that road to the Ardnamurchan. So as I said, we make what I would consider very much a West Coast Highland style whisky here. And we do that simply by making 50% peated spirit and 50% unpeated. And we'll peat that whisky to about, barley, sorry, to about 30 parts per million. So it's like a mild, but really lovely kind of campfire smoke. And we'll bring these flavours together before we bottle it. And it gives us control in terms of our style and our flavour. So that's quite unusual about Ardnamurchan. And even I forgot to say, when it comes to powering the distillery, obviously it takes a lot of energy to make whisky. And our biomass boiler is great because not only does it power everything we do here at the distillery, it also has the ability to heat the local houses in the area. So we have the holiday rental next to the distillery, which is powered by the distillery. And our neighbouring houses, they're also powered purely from biomass, just from the excess heat from production, which is pretty cool. Pretty cool. But let's take into the distillery and have a wee look around. So this is our malt bin. This is where we take in all our grain. So the barley's all malted. It's grown in Fife. A lot of it's malted up in Baird's maltings. And it's delivered to us 28 tonnes a go. And if you remember the roads that lead you to the Ardnamurchan, they're pretty mental. So to think of the truck driver bringing all our malted barley here, it's kind of insane. And then we can take it into the distillery and use it in production. So when we first get the barley delivered to you, the malted barley, the first thing we do to it is we crush it down so we can gain access to the starch. So we take it from this to this just by passing it through a mill. And this is what we can extract the sugars from, quite simply. It's essentially porridge. If you want to simplify things. So we'll add water to this in the next stage of production. You can convert the starches to sugar. We can get a lot of sugar. We can get a lot of alcohol. And we're in the business of making whiskey. So the more alcohol, the better from our barley. Callum gave me a tour inside the distillery. And then we had a look inside some of the warehouses. So I think this will be quite exciting for you. Obviously here in this really beautiful part of They mature here so they can almost soak up the environment here. But wait till you see Ruth when you go have a look in there. Wow, the smell of the whiskey really hits you as soon as you walk in. Everything we do here is traditional, down to our warehousing. So we have traditional Dunnage style warehousing. And if you don't know what that means, that means we've got earth floors and the casks are beautifully stacked on top of each other and up to four high. There's nothing kind of holding these in place. They're just really well stacked. It's quite an art to be honest. These are some of our really fancy Spinola sherry casks. So a lot of the casks we're using tend to be either things like this American bourbon cask or these premium sherry. All our casks are painted either with a particular colour for each year or the sherry casks, they'll have a roundel and all the details that we need to know about the When you're in the warehouse and if you're looking around you'll see a variety of different size casks. We've got little tiny ones up the top there and we've got our standard ASBs, American bourbon barrels. The biggest ones we use are these. These are called sherry butts. So very large 500 litre cask. Yeah, you're talking like anything between like six and 800 bottles from one of these big guys. The size of the cask really matters. If it's a small cask, it will mature quicker. If it's a big cask, it'll take longer to mature because there's less surface area and that's why we have so many different sizes. So do casks ever leak in the warehouse? In an ideal world, no, but they do. Casks are like a natural product so with fluctuation in temperature, the wood expands and contracts and then over time, yeah, sometimes they can leak a wee bit. It's not necessarily a bad thing but if the leak is particularly bad then we want to look at it. So there's whiskey leaking from this but it's not too bad. It's just slightly but we can fix that. You can kind of see in here this whiskey barrel has been repaired a wee bit. So it's obviously leaked previously around this edge. So what the guys can do is they can remove the bands and then we can use, let's see if I can find some reeds. We do an old traditional method and we get these reeds which they're kind of foamy but when you open up the cask a wee bit, you hammer this into the bit that's leaking, tighten up the cask again and then they swell up and seal the cask naturally. So it's pretty cool. With all the fancy technology of today, Scotch whiskey industry, they tend to stick to the old methods that have worked for hundreds of years. So we'll take you into the very first warehouse that was built here. We have six warehouses but this is like the OG warehouse and my favourite personally. It's got that kind of old character but you still get that lovely kind of whiff of air and whiskey in the air. It's great. This is our original first cask ever filled at the distillery in July 2014. Very soon it will be 10 years old so it's going to be a big year for us at the distillery. It's the same kind of warehouse. It's an old dunnage style with a few more interesting casks but yeah you can see here for example this is one of my favourite types of casks and these are Madeira casks, fortified red wine similar to a sherry or a port but from the island of Madeira just off Portugal. Another unusual cask because this is a Sertern barrel or a Sertern Barrique. You can see all these, you might know it's a lot of private names on casks. Oh right. So we instead of making a gin what we could do is sell the whiskey like sell the spirit in cask which was a good way of gaining revenue but with the distillery's popularity the way it is right now we're actually in the situation that we kind of need these casks back so we can supply the demand we have for the whiskey. Quite often we're actually buying these casks back off these people we sold them to originally and you can see on this cask like how how only in what this is from 2016 in that short period of time the environment here like the salty air is having it's an effect there's a kind of fungal growth on the cask and the bands are all rusted up so you know maturing here on site does make a difference. In here is our receiver so when we distill the alcohol it comes off about 70% alcohol and we reduce it using water off the river off the burn that flows past the distillery and we bring it down to 63.5 before filling the cask and that helps reduce the amount the angels are going to take away and it's a good strength for the spirit to move in and out of the woods bringing whole colour. Got to bear in mind when it's distilled there's no colour in the whiskey. You can see a little bit here this tank's empty but you can see the spirit crystal clear. All the colour should come from the cask. Some distilleries do add food colouring some for good reasons some you know I would never say that we're doing it better than them but what I would say is that whiskey is a batch process and depending on your market if you're sending whiskey all around the world and it's different batches you send and they visually look different because all the whiskey ages differently. If they visually look different sometimes the consumer will get confused and maybe not trust the product so distilleries add a little colouring to make everything standard which is fair enough. We don't add any caramel colouring just because a lot of the people following our whiskey are really in the know and they look for the fact our whiskey's natural and we try to keep everything as authentic and as natural as possible. All the casks are literally filled here by a team of four or five guys and it's not a very high-tech process even though we're a brand new modern distillery everything is done here by hand and by people which I think is a nice thought. The casks are sitting here turn the lever and listen for it to fill when it makes a different noise you turn it off and the cask is full which is which is pretty fun that can carry eight thousand litres of spirit. This is how you get the bungs? Yeah so I think we call it a bung extractor and if you imagine you put that on the top of the bung and what we'll do is we'll hammer that down twist the thread into the bung and then just simply pull out the pull out the bung with a nice strong pull and then we can sample the casks we can gauge the casks so we're using that to measure how much liquid is in the cask how much whiskey we can possibly get out of that barrel after the evaporation after certain little leaks etc. We were very lucky that Callum's colleague who was working on the casks returned to the warehouse and showed us what he was doing. He opened a cask and then extracted a sample of whiskey this was in order to check the alcohol percentage and how much whiskey is left inside the cask. 60.5 so it's not lost much strength that's 2018 so six years or something lost 61% alcohol yeah so they lost whatever that is three percent. So a really nice thing to to try at the end of a tour of the distillery is obviously our amazing single mullet and this is our this is our core release this is like our what we'd say a flagship bottling this is really the one you want to try because it represents a lot of what we do here at the distillery 65% ex-american bourbon casks 35% sherry similar to what we have in our warehouses 50% peated spirit and 50% unpeated so yeah it's just a little whiff of smoke on the finish it's really really nice and it's bottled at 46.8% and it's natural color and it's un-chill filled it's all the good stuff and probably the coolest thing and something that's really quite unique to Arden American is we have this little QR code in the back of a bottle now if you scan that it will tell you absolutely everything you could possibly want to know what was into this whiskey full transparency from the species of barley to who bottled it who distilled it how long the fermentation was you know actually everything everything you could possibly want to know so we put a lot of kind of heart and soul into this whiskey and we want to we want to boast about how good it is so we want to be as transparent as possible to ensure you know you're getting you know a really good quality product this will be the one that people will this is the one you're most likely to find and it's definitely one i would recommend trying particularly if it's the first Arden American you're going to try because this this is like a staple and i'm sure i'm sure most people will like it which i hope they do the best thing about the distillery this year is um little bay brownies i've set up a little stall here doing probably the best coffee on the peninsula um and not to mention probably the best brownies in scotland like seriously wow dynamite brownies and they're massive as well so if you try these they're amazing thank you so much thank you i've had such a wonderful few days getting away from the tourist hot spots exploring the quieter Arden American peninsula and reaching mainland scotland's westernmost point see you next time