The estate factor had not been paid for 18 months. The local people had blockaded the landowner in the big house: he escaped by helicopter.
In this way the sometimes violent history of Knoydart was still being played out when I first went there in 1998.
The peninsula has no roads, and for practical purposes the tiny village of Inverie can only be reached across the sea. To reach it overland, you must walk through some of the most contorted and untamed land in the highlands ..... the "Rough Bounds". Knoydart has a full share of difficult ravines, problematical river crossings and tidal footways. The whole area was requisitioned for special forces training in WW2.
Our route ran over three days from Glenfinnan on the "Road to the Isles", through the mountains to A'Chuil bothy in Glen Dessary, threading its way over a second pass to Sourlies bothy at the head of superbly remote Loch Nevis, and finally over the high Mam Meadail and down the glen to Inverie.
We ended at the bitter memorial to the Seven Men of 1948 who tried to reclaim land for crofting from the hated Brocket family. http://www.highlandclearances.co.uk/clearances/postclearances_knoydartseven.htm
Dolly, Angela, Steve and I made a sunny start away from Glenfinnan with its curving "Harry Potter" viaduct.
There is also of course the memorial to Charles Stuart's landing in 1745.He was in the pay of Britain's enemies, and disliked by the majority of calvinist Scots who had emerged from the Wars of the Covenant.
However, he must have been a fit young man, because fleeing from Culloden in April 1746, his minders got him through 50 miles and 20,000 feet of Rough Bounds, in just over 5 days, travelling for the most part at night.
Not having a price on our heads, or the prospect of judicial disembowelling, we four made more relaxed progress past the impressive face of Streap and round to the comfortable A'Chuil bothy which sits next to a wood, where Danny and Ian from Derby had already made a good job of fuel gathering.
Sunday came with an easterly gale and driving rain. We'd planned accordingly..... a shortish day walking west. Two women going the other way were looking pretty blown about.
Mam na Cloiche Airde has an impassable ravine, where we came across Ute and Paul from Germany struggling a little with UK navigation on their first visit. Finding the vague path up and around, we all got down to Sourlies and lit the fire. 
Smoke ????? Never seen so much !! Most of it billowed through the room and out the door. Eventually 10 of us in residence struggled all evening against some chimney problem, and avoided asphyxation. Just.
And in the midst of this near-death experience, a lad from Sheffield kept nipping outside to get a roll-up.
Ute and Paul enjoyed the playing-cards game.
As the early morning rain hammered on the roof on Monday, I wondered about the forthcoming mile of sea level marsh, and the wire bridge which has been signed as "dangerous" for at least 13 years since Angela and I last crossed here almost to the very day on 6th May 2002. 
Fortunately both of these went fairly straightforwardly, and as the weather improved, we were on an excellent stalkers track up Mam Meadail.
Through the top of the pass, the sea and Inverie came into view. Downhill all the way now, and time for a quick beer before the ferry to Mallaig.
It was interesting to see in Inverie that the Knoydart Foundation has celebrated its 15th anniversary, having finally bought the estate into community ownership after the turbulence of the 1990s.
I was told, that of course, the indigenous families are all long gone, and the new community in Knoydart has emerged from post-war arrivals from Scotland and England. Good luck to them all.
