Sitting firm on the shore of Loch Broda is the well-used inn, Broda’s Wayside. Once a croft, it grew by degrees: an extra room for travellers, a lean-to for beasts, a still behind the kitchen. The walls are thick with smoke and stories, patched in places with driftwood from the loch.
The keeper, Marra Broda, runs the place with the steadiness of someone who has seen too many seasons to waste one on fuss. Amid the upkeep of her family’s farm—oats and wool to warm her neighbours inside and out—she brews her own ale, dark and nutty, almost a meal in itself, and keeps a pot of something edible on the hearth whether customers arrive or not.
Regulars come from nearby farms and the scattered upland hamlets. Shepherds, tinkers, and traders share the benches until the next burst of weather or work calls them home. Travellers on their long seasonal routes stop here to warm up, swap news, and find out which paths are still passable.
On still evenings the firelight shows in the loch’s surface, a blush of gold on grey water. Locals say that’s how the inn survives: so long as the reflection burns, folk will find their way to its door.