The bar in Badachro Inn remains essentially unchanged. Recent renovations which created the Outside Inn and upgraded the toilets left the bar area as it always had been - apart from new bar stools and a lick of paint.

This is what gives the place its special atmosphere. The old wooden bar bears the patina of many years of pints and nips sliding across to thirsty customers. The various bar mirrors, cracked with age, might even flicker with the ghosts of conversations long gone.

On a summer evening, when the bar fills up, the talk is lively and the last light of the setting sun dims beyond the window panes. People shake off the day's efforts: walking in the hills, fishing on the loch, crossing the long cliffs to hidden beaches. Tourists, locals, travellers of all kinds fetch up here and enjoy respite from the world after the day is over.

Nor is Badachro Inn entirely a backwater. We preserve a kind of Scottish cosmopolitanism that is getting rarer in that pub-chain world so many of us want to escape. In Badachro Inn that means you could have a quiet pint, but you might end up in conversation about fish, politics or the meaning of life.