Friday 2nd September 2022
We dropped one car at Benderloch and then drove back to the village hall at Kilmore.
The first four miles or so were on the A861 and it was quite narrow, quite hilly, quite bendy and had quite a lot of traffic. So we had hi-vis tops on and Jill had a flashing red cycle lamp on her rucksack. It kept us on our toes, listening for approaching vehicles and timing when to jump onto the verge where there was one. Concentrating like that made the miles slip past and soon we reached the the start of the pavement that runs into Oban.
We turned off before reaching Oban to pass behind the hospital to Gleann Shealeach and so we were going south rather than north. This brought us past a radio transmitter station and down to the shore of the Sound of Kerrera where the road goes past the Kerrera ferry terminal and eventually into Oban.
We have been to Oban many times before. It is an important ferry terminal for the islands and so always seems to be busy. However, the centre of the town now has a rather rundown feel to it. I suspect its finest hour was back in the 1920s and 30s. We picked up a couple of items of shopping we needed and bought filled rolls for lunch and continued northwards along the sea front. The north end is definitely the smarter part of town with attractive hotels and guest houses, probably late Victorian or Edwardian.
The road we were following is a no through road to Ganavan and as you approach Ganavan there is a “Millionaire’s Row” of smart, newer houses.
Being a dull day, the beach at Ganavan was empty but most of the benches were occupied with people having their lunch. We took the only remaining bench and settled in for our lunch.
For the next section I had planned a route around the cliffs to Dunbeg. No paths were marked on the OS maps but satellite images showed a number of paths on the headland and so it seemed it ought to be a goer.
There was a wide, grassy path leading away from the beach and also a tarmac National Cycle Route. The grassy path gave me optimism. A local dog walker appeared coming towards us and so I stopped to ask whether the headland could be walked around. He quite categorically said it was not possible unless we were prepared to cross a “crevice”. I think that was Scots pronunciation for a “crevasse”. He explained it would be a good leap and that it was 60’ deep and not something he would try. Jill’s knee means she is not confident about doing much leaping especially across a 60′ crevasse so that was a non-starter. (Since then I have looked back at aerial photos and other walkers’ blogs and I think we were mis-informed because other walkers have certainly gone that way.)
We followed the cycle route which went over the headland but more inland and soon came to Dunbeg where we had to walk along the verge of the A85. This is the main trunk route from Glasgow to Oban and it has plenty of traffic. It is not especially wide and so the central white line and the white line at the edge of the road are rumble strips to help keep motorists on the carriageway.
Fortunately we only had about a mile and a half of this torment before we took a long cut along the “old road” and when we came back the A85 just before Connel there was a pavement.
We stopped for some coffee on a bench overlooking the mouth of Loch Etive. Loch Etive is a sea loch and at Connel there is a narrowing and a natural weir under the Connel Bridge. The falls can flow in either direction depending on the state of the tide which must be a rare thing in the world of waterfalls. Today it was falling out to sea since the tide was going out.
We made a rather circuitous route to the bridge because I was under the impression that there were pedestrian access steps – there are not. Just follow the road. Connel bridge was a rail bridge which was adapted to carry cars by making, in effect, a long level crossing so it carried either cars or trains but not at the same time. When the branch line was closed it became exclusively a road bridge.
Once across the bridge, there is a cycle path which we followed all the way to Benderloch. We went past the Oban Airport Terminal which is new and smart. I wondered if there was really enough air traffic to justify an airport but I see that it services Islay, Colonsay and Tiree.
Benderloch has a café-cum-bookshop but of course it was closed when we arrived so we just headed back to Kilmore to collect the car.
Just Coasting 