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Mainly a travel day. We started early from Arlesey, narrowly caught our connection at Peterborough, and arrived in Glasgow in mid-afternoon where Mum was already waiting for us. The usual bit of faff followed (hiring a car; buying a drink and some doughnuts and a surprise tennis racket...) and then Jeremy drove to Connel which took just over 2 hours. A huge improvement from the last time Mum & I had been on that road alongside Loch Lomond: the roads are much easier and faster now. We booked into the Falls of Lora hotel and met lots of family in the attached bistro for dinner.
After breakfast we hurried off to Oban and managed to cram a quick walk into the morning. We started from the centre of town, walked up to the Kerrera ferry and returned through fields (and some mud). Had fishcakes and chips overlooking Oban harbour for lunch.
In the afternoon was Louisa and Alan's wedding, at St. Mary's Church in Connel. The sun came out and the piper piped: it was all lovely. The reception was held in Oban at the Corran Halls.
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There was a general plan to meet up with family in the afternoon, but as the sun was offering to come out we weren't going to let the day go by without a walk first! We took the passenger ferry to the island of Kerrera and walked around the southern loop. About halfway round was a wonderful tea garden where we had home-made soup; and the feature of the walk (apart from the parrots) was the ruined-but-preserved castle on the southern tip.
We drove to John & Mary's house just past Kilmore (with great pride in our navigation skills) and as soon as we arrived were whisked off to walk to the waterfall where Alan proposed. Beautiful location! We all came back to the house and relaxed with a drink and a big group of family for a while. In the evening we ate with Mum and Anne at the Wide-mouthed Frog restaurant by Connel Bridge.
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The day of two walks! The black lochs walk started from Connel itself, which we felt was an opportunity not to be missed. It was a bit disappointing: largely a road and heavy-track walk and nothing particularly spectacular to see when we got there.
After returning to Oban for a sandwich lunch and some essentials like cash, maps, T-shirts and doughnuts, we drove to Ganavan bay from where we walked to Dunstaffnage Castle. This was a beautiful coastal walk but definitely longer than the 4 miles the book claimed! In the evening we drove to Kilchrenan where we checked into our B&B, Roineabhal, and ate in the local pub.
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We were determined to have a go at Ben Cruachan while we were staying so close to it, and when we checked the week's weather forecast in Oban Tourist Information, Tuesday looked like the best bet. Accordingly, we were at breakfast promptly at 8, filled ourselves with porridge and (in my case) smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, and were off by 9 with packed lunched kindly provided by Maria. The Cruachan Horseshoe starts with a 1,000ft climb through woodland which was pleasant (if painful) to the Cruachan Dam. Unfortunately when we got to the dam the clouds were almost within touching distance over our heads! We followed the path until we got about halfway up to the first shoulder and decided that the visibility was too poor for safety (and clearly much too poor to expect views from the top!). We turned back to the level of the reservoir and improvised a walk around it instead. We did pop into the visitors' centre afterwards to find out the "Hollow Mountain" story; the lake is used for hydroelectric power storage, much like Dinorwig in Wales.
We had dinner at the B&B, a fantastic meal followed by mellow drinks round the fire with the two other guests (Ruth and David) and our hosts (Maria and Roger).
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We drove gently through the Glen of Orchy, pausing to skim stones and amble in the sunshine, and had lunch on a picnic table at Bridge of Orchy. The West Highland Way crosses the road there so we saw an assortment of very heavily-laden hikers. We drove on into Glencoe and hiked up to the Lost Valley, where the surviving Campbells hid with their cattle after the massacre. At the shoulder we found a pair of extremely tame chaffinches, and spent quite some time taking photos of them.
We drove on to Fort William, where we met up with Mum and Anne at their B&B and then were joined by John & Mary, David & Claire for dinner at a fish restaurant. As we drove over Connel bridge on our way back home we stopped and watched the Falls for a while.
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We drove to Dalavich and its tiny shop-come-post office and hired a pair of bikes for the day. They were very generous - we'd completely failed to notice it would be half-day closing and there was no way they'd be open when we got back, so they just quietly didn't take our deposits, and told us where to put the bikes when we got back! Unfortunately Jeremy's bike had a soggy tyre and front brakes that came on without asking... I had no such excuses but this was an extremely hard day's cycling. We cycled round the south side of Loch Avich on a forestry commission track. It was heavy going - both climbing and falling but also a very dissipative surface, you couldn't use momentum to carry you up a hill at all. When we reached the road at the far end we were exhausted. On the other hand, the road riding did seem very easy after that! We cycled on to a picnic spot by the side of the loch where we had a well-earned rest (and lunch) before slogging back on the road to Dalavich. We were very sore.
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We drove to Oban from where we got the Caledonian MacBrayne ferry to Craignure on the island of Mull. The ferry was tailed by seagulls the whole way: if you ever wanted to see the details of how birds fly, this was like having your own wind tunnel!
This was a well-planned expedition and we knew we could meet up with the bus to Tobermory. Once there, we walked along the front and had a coffee, then headed away from the picturesque bay for a woodland walk with views back towards the harbour. We finished with a late lunch outside a pub in Tobermory before taking the bus back to Craignure and the ferry back to Oban.
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The main task of the day (apart from packing ourselves out of Roineabhal) was the drive from Kilchrenan to Bute, but we managed to punctuate it with a walk along the way. We drove to the edge of Loch Fyne where we stopped in the forestry commission land at Ardcastle Wood. Our walk book had billed this as the best the forestry commission offers and it was idyllic. We had lunch right on the loch side, followed by a wander through a disused quarry which was incredibly green and dappled. Sadly we forgot the camera on this walk.
The drive from there to Colintraive for the Bute ferry took us longer than we expected; we knew the ferry would be on timetable after 5pm and we could see we weren't going to have time to buy tickets before the 5:30 ferry so we phoned ahead to say we wouldn't quite manage to arrive before 6. When we reached the ferry, though, they were wonderful and sold us a single ticket very quickly and let us drive straight on: so we arrived at Port Bannatyne at about 5:45. Our self-catering cottage (Marnoc cottage) is in the grounds of Kames Castle, which are extensive and beautiful. In the centre is an 18th century walled garden. We spent the rest of the evening exploring the grounds and settling in.
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You've heard of the West Highland Way (93 miles, fairly serious walking) - well Bute is possessed of the West Island Way, 30 miles and the serious books suggest you do it in two days. We chose a section at the south end of the island and made it into a figure of eight by tacking on a fairly short chunk of road at the beginning. The weather was glorious all day. We started by crossing from Kilchattan Bay to the golf club on the other side of the island, along the beach and back to Kilchattan, where we had lunch. The second loop continued round the south tip of Bute and past the ruins of St Blane's church. We finished the day with a drink outside one of the bay-front hotels, still in beautiful sunshine.
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We planned an 8-mile linear walk along the shores of a Loch. Of course that required sorting out buses to get us back to the car: we investigated the timetable but there only seemed to be a stop at one end and halfway up. Undaunted, we parked a quarter way up, walked to the halfway stop, and successfully caught a bus to the end: the gardens at the south end of Loch Eck. We then walked the slightly disappointing track (bit of a route-march) along its western shore, before returning to the road at the north. Irritatingly a bus then drove past but despite our best waving manoeuvres, refused to stop so we topped off the day with an hour-long stomp up the road back to the car.
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After the hard walk yesterday, we spent a relaxed day around the castle grounds. We played tennis for about an hour and a half, had a game on the putting green, and finally went out for a little wander round Port Bannatyne in the early evening sun.
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After careful planning, we took a bus from Port Bannatyne to Rhubodach - and it kindly let us off at the start of our walk instead of taking us right to the ferry and making us walk back along the road. We then did a good section of the West Island Way in reverse (and it really does have a direction, the signposts don't help you much going south!). This was forest for the first half and then open tracks in blazing sunshine. At Ettrick Bay we paused for a paddle (the water was really warm) and then walked back across the island on the road to Kames Castle. In the evening we drove to Rothesay and had dinner at a Chinese restaurant.
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We drove to Tighnabruich on the coast facing Bute's western shore. After a stop at a little shop in Kames we parked in Tighnabruich and walked north along the water's edge to the Pheasantry and its pepperpot-shaped lighthouse. The return walk through the woods was made more interesting by a waterlily pond and a persistent knee-to-neck-height telephone wire which we discovered, at the end of the walk, was attached to nothing.
On the way back we took the tiny road through Otter Ferry and paused at Glendaruel to look at the carved stones - which are very old gravestones, early examples of the stonemason's art.
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For our last walking day, we made a reasonably early start and, for once, were lucky with the ferry to Colintraive. We drove through Strachur, round the top of Loch Fyne, down through Inveraray and eventually to Crinan, a tiny village at the end of a canal. We walked along the canal and climbed Cruach Mor before returning along the canal, watching the locks and retractable bridges in action. We had dinner at the Colintraive Hotel (just opposite the ferry) and one final game on the putting green before packing up and going to bed.
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We left the cottage and drove to Rothesay, where we looked, as advised, at the impressive victorian toilets before wandering along the front. The ferry to Wemyss Bay took about half an hour and the drive back to Glasgow was very easy. We returned the car, stuck the bags in left luggage and went out for an Italian lunch. Then, having 45 minutes to spare, we popped into the underground and went for a walk in Kelvin Grove. Our train from Glasgow was at 4pm and we were home before 10.
The full set of photos can be found in the Scotland Gallery.