The River Shin is short. It drains Loch Shin into the Kyle of Sutherland at Inveran, falling steeply through a narrow gorge over a series of broken ledges. Most of the year the falls look like an ordinary set of Highland rapids, fast and brown after rain. From late spring through early autumn, though, salmon arrive from the sea, run up the Kyle and into the Shin, and meet this obstacle on their way upstream. They jump in waves. Some of them clear the falls on the first try. Others slap into the rock face and tumble back, gather themselves in the pool, and try again. At one point the falls were even dynamited to make the salmon's passage a little easier - an unusual concession from a sporting estate to its quarry.

For years the falls had an unlikely host. The site sat on the Balnagown Estate, owned by Mohamed Al-Fayed, the Egyptian-born businessman who ran Harrods of Knightsbridge from 1985 until 2010. He turned the falls into a tourist stop with a restaurant, a small branch of Harrods, and - perhaps most memorably - a life-sized waxwork of himself. Visitors browsed Harrods-branded shortbread under the gaze of their absent host, then walked down to watch the salmon. In May 2013 the visitor centre burned to the ground. The waxwork and the shop went up with it.

Rebuilding took four years. Balnagown Estates worked with the Kyle of Sutherland Development Trust and the new visitor centre opened in May 2017. The local opening event was given the unforgettable name 'Celebra-Shin'. By 2018, Mac and Wild had taken over operations - a venison-and-wild-food restaurant company founded in London by Andy Waugh and Calum MacKinnon. Their original site was on Devonshire Square in the city, and Falls of Shin became their third location. The shift in tone is striking. Where there used to be a Harrods outpost in the Highlands, there is now a place that serves wild meat sourced largely from the surrounding glens.

Beyond the salmon viewing platform, the site has expanded into a small countryside park. There is a mini-golf course, woodland walks through the surrounding pine forest, and a large children's playground. The river itself slides through a cleft in the rock just downhill, the noise of the water audible long before you see it. A walking path traces the riverbank back toward Inveran and the railway viaduct over the Kyle, and another climbs into the conifer plantation toward the moor. For most visitors the trip is short - half an hour to watch the salmon, lunch, a wander. For the salmon, it's the last great obstacle between a thousand miles of Atlantic Ocean and the gravel beds upstream where they were born.