“A proper, purpose-built shore path, officially named the Loch Indaal Way, linking Bruichladdich and Port Charlotte along the loch, with a detour down to a quiet beach at Port Ban.”
Scenic Walk
- Flat, easy walk from Bruichladdich Distillery
- Good loch views
- Quiet and rarely crowded
Before 2021, the only way between Bruichladdich and Port Charlotte on foot was the A847, a national-speed-limit road with no pavement. The Loch Indaal Way changed that: a six-year project led by the Islay Community Access Group, with Argyll and Bute Council, Bruichladdich Distillery and The Botanist Foundation, built a dedicated, traffic-free path along the shore instead. It opened in October 2021, with children from Port Charlotte Primary School leading the procession along the finished route.
The path runs about 2.5km from Bruichladdich to Port Charlotte, crossing boggier ground on bridges and boardwalks. A spur leads down to Port Ban, a small, quiet beach popular with swimmers, and an accessible ramp near Port Ban's war memorial, raised for the men of Kilchoman parish who died in the two World Wars.
Sea pinks flower along the shore from spring into early summer, and gorse blooms in spring and summer; oystercatchers and other waders work the tideline year-round, with brambles ready to pick along the path in early autumn.
Port Ban is a genuine but unsupervised swimming spot - there's no lifeguard, the water is cold even in summer, and the beach narrows considerably at high tide. Check tide times before you go, and don't count on there being much sand to swim from later in the day.