Saturday 9th June

Warnings of heavy showers today.

Left going south & east towards Fort William through some heavy showers which had cleared by the time we arrived. It sits at the top of Loch Linnhe & has an aluminium smelter but is otherwise not particularly noteworthy.

Then on to Glencoe to the visitor centre. This is the site of the famous massacre of 40 of its inhabitants in February 1698 for failure to sign allegiance to King William, in time. The villages people had entertained soldiers for 12 days before they were killed & most of those who escaped died of hunger & cold. We tried to find one of the old house ruins but gave up & went on.

The drive through the highlands & alongside the lochs is very beautiful but the roads are of varying quality & there isn't 100m of straight road to be found. This, with the traffic load makes driving slow & hard.

Having found Oban which was absolutely choked with traffic & people we went on to our Cuifall Hotel at Kilmelford about 10k south. After dinner we had an early night in our fine room on the 2nd floor.

Sunday 10th June

Having a lazy day with a late start as breakfast was served between 8.30 - 9.30. We went south & first stop was Carnassarie Castle, a 16th century house built by the local bishop who was also translated the prayer book into Gaelic for the locals. Considering it had been abandoned after being burnt in the 18th century its walls were a tribute to the solidity of the stonework of its builders. Having completed our castle quota for the day (1) we moved south to Kilmartin which has a museum devoted to the earliest inhabitants of the area of the Bronze & Iron Ages who left numerous cairns, stone circles & cups & rings of rock art on the stone faces in the valley. The museum was somewhat disappointing to us but next door the church had some remarkable early crosses from the 10th to the 14th century & tomb lids from the period.

Taking a very minor road we followed it to the Crinan Canal cut in the early 1800s to allow small ships to cross a long peninsula including the Mull of Kintyre from the south east to the Hebrides. It is 9 miles long with 15 locks & represents a remarkable example of early 19th Century engineering expertise. At the Crinan end we were surprised to see an ancient Clyde Puffer, a small steam freighter used extensively until the 1950s to carry goods to & from the islands & lochs. It apparently is the last working one in existence & the smell of its coal smoke reminded d*** of the trains he knew. The canal s now mainly used by yachts & one there was a beautiful 1950s teak 50 foot, vessel which is being restored.

On our return journey we turned off to see, after a fairly stiff climb, example of the cups & rings scribed into the faces of outcrops as shown in the museum.

Having satisfied our curiosity we returned to our little hotel for dinner & another early night.