Thursday 1st September 2022
We left one car at Kilmore village hall, the end of today’s walk and drove back to Kilmelford and left the other car at their village hall. Then we set off down the road towards Melfort where there is a harbour and marina for smart boats. It was a clear, sunny day and warming up fast. The road is a single track road with passing places and it seemed remarkably busy for the first couple of miles. We had good views over Loch Melfort.
At Kilchoan House there was a lot of activity and the noise of a helicopter winding up disturbed the peace. I have no idea if it was a business or pleasure activity going on but we watched as it took off and disappeared in a southerly direction.
The public road ends after 5.5 miles just before Dagnish. Here we took an established estate track that climbed up and over the peninsula to drop down to the sea just south of Ardmaddy Castle.
The gardens at Ardmaddy are open to the public but with a long walk still to go we decided to miss out on visiting the gardens.
From here, we were on tarmac and were for the rest of the walk. It was pleasant enough walking up the lane to join the B844 at about ten miles into our walk. This B road services Seil Island which is joined to the mainland by a bridge – Clachan Bridge – and to the island of Luing which has the more tenuous link of a ferry from Seil. This just meant the road had a significant amount of tourist and other traffic.
We were disappointed to see quite a lot of Japanese knotweed though we did also see some vans of a specialist weed killer firm and so some efforts are underway to try and eradicate it.
We were more than ready for lunch but there was a lack of any bum-perches until we were opposite Loch Seil where we made do with a grassy bank of the right height, shaded by some overhanging trees and we settled in for lunch.
After lunch we continued along the road to Kilinver and thence to the A816 which challenged us for the next three miles. Generally it is quite wide and has reasonably good sight-lines but that just means that the traffic, when it comes, comes fast. Oddly our nearest mishap was a “little old lady” who drove not too fast at all leaning forward with both hands firmly on the steering wheel. Either she failed to see me or ignored me (despite me waving my arms at her) and did not move out at all.
We did have some good views over Loch Feochan
We made it to the village in one piece, retrieved the car and went back for the other car and headed off to our next B&B in Dunbeg just north of Oban.
Just Coasting 