Tuesday 26th July 2022
On our last walk we reached the ferry at Portavadie. Today we were starting to walk from Tarbert where the ferry from Portavadie comes in. You have to be fairly specific with the name”Tarbert” and “Tarbet”; it is Gaelic for an isthmus or narrowing and there are many of them throughout the Highlands and Islands.
We had intended to be walking a couple of weeks ago but unfortunately during our fortnight off walking, Jill went to London as Emily had invited her to the tennis at Wimbledon; she didn’t get to the tennis but did get Covid 3 days after coming home. Despite our best efforts I caught it from Jill and so we were unfit to walk for a while.
Today we have a short walk of about 11½ miles, partly to let us in gently after Covid and partly because logistically it just works better that way. From the quay, we climbed up to Tarbert Castle along the Kintyre Way which we would be following for the entirety of today’s walk.
The path is a firm, grit path and leads away from the castle and winds its way through the forestry plantation. The Kintyre Way is way is marked with blue posts which are easy to spot – except where branches have grown across them. We came up to an impressively large ”beehive” cairn. It seems it is the Millennium Cairn but I suspect there may have been a cairn before the 2000 millennium because, even on my rather old version, the OS map shows a cairn .
Shortly after the cairn, the Kintyre Way joins a gravel track and I feared that the rest of the walk would be along such gravel forestry tracks. The track was at least wide enough to walk side by side and, with no traffic noise, we indulged in some conversation, something of a rarity on our long walk. We were musing on the many questions raised by our visit yesterday to the large panel of prehistoric rock art at Achnabreck, not far from Lochgilphead. If anyone is interested you can find some photos and a brief discussion of rock art here.
The route opened out and we looked across open moorland on the west side whilst the east side was still blanketed in monoculture forest.
I am an unashamed seeker after views and find forest walking rather tedious. Yes, there are birds and wild flowers and occasional deer but the views are generally lacking and I feel confined by dense trees.
As the open moorland was coming to an end, the Kintyre Way turns off along a grassy track through forestry land.
The path generally was firm and reasonably wide. What was more significant was that the path had been recently maintained; there had been a quad bike with a grass cutter along within the last day or so as the grass cuttings at the side were still green. This is a first for us on Scotland’s footpaths. The path was easy to see and to follow.
There were one or two boggy patches. We were ready for a break and would have liked to get off the path and sit on one of the old stumps where clear felling had taken place a few years back but there was a boggy ditch along each side of the path. Eventually we came to a forestry sign board on a dry, grassy area beside the path and we sat, each leaning against one of the two posts, and had our coffee.
From here, the Kintyre Way passed through a gate onto an estate track with signs warning of active shooting and also warned dog owners to keep their dogs on leads because there were fox snares set. I thought that the practice of snaring animals had been made illegal in the UK but it seems that is not the case.
The track follows the Skipness river down to Skipness and the sea. It is a pleasant walk and we actually passed a couple of walkers going in the opposite direction. The river passes through a gorge as it descends
In Skipness there was a convenient bench by the bus stop opposite the post office and so we stopped there for lunch. The sun was shining and there was gentle breeze. It was ideal.
After lunch we had a couple of miles to go to reach the Claonaig Ferry Terminal, from where we had planned to get a bus back to Tarbert. We have been here before because, when I cycled from Land’s End to John o’ Groats in 2009, Jill had joined me at Ardrossan where we took the ferry to Arran and cycled to Lochranza and then took the ferry to Claonaig on our way to Oban. This time, having arrived just before 2pm, we would have a 2½ hour wait for the bus. So we rang the number pasted on the bus shelter for the local taxi and agreed a pick up from the road junction in Claonaig, a quarter of a mile up the road. Fifteen minutes later we were on our way back to Tarbert. Our taxi driver was a retired businessman from Essex who had relocated to the Mull of Kintyre a couple of years ago. Having built his dream house in the hills, he was now dismayed as Scottish Power had clear-felled the trees behind his house to install a big wind farm and had created a gravel roadway through the hills around his house to install the power cables for the wind farm. I expect he will get over it. Indeed there are various access points up and down Kintyre where construction vehicles can access the various pylons or towers as they call them.
Just Coasting 