Clachan Bridge

The Clachan Sound, the narrow tidal channel separating the Isle of Seil from the mainland, opens into the Atlantic at both ends. So the small stone bridge that crosses it has been called the Bridge over the Atlantic for the best part of two centuries, and technically the name holds up. The crossing takes under a minute on foot.

The bridge went up between 1792 and 1793, when Seil and neighbouring Easdale were busy quarrying slate that roofed buildings across Britain and well beyond, and getting goods across the sound by boat had become a bottleneck. The design is credited to John Stevenson of Oban, though Thomas Telford still gets named in error, and Robert Mylne, the engineer behind Blackfriars Bridge in London, saw it built. The original plan had two arches. What got built instead was a single high span of around 22 metres, rising about 12 metres above the channel bed so that boats of up to 40 tons could pass beneath at high tide. The whole thing runs to roughly 300 feet with its approaches, built of rough boulder rubble, and it still carries the B844 today. Category A listed since 1971. The hump was lowered slightly in the 1980s for longer vehicles, and the parapets raised, reportedly to stop sheep jumping off.

At the Seil end sits the Tigh an Truish Inn, the House of the Trousers. After the 1745 Jacobite rising, when the government banned tartan and the kilt, islanders heading to the mainland for work would stop here to change into trousers, then change back on the way home. The inn still does a decent pint and remains the obvious reward for the fifty-yard walk over the ocean.

Go slowly if you're driving. The arch is steep enough that you can't see oncoming traffic until you're at the top of it.