4 June A day out from Lochgilphead

I drove up to Kilmartin.  Kilmartin Glen is rich with prehistoric sites.  For some reason I didn’t get engaged in this.  I went to the museum and found it pretensious and a turn off.  The best thing I found was in the Kirk, a display of paintings of the Queen by the local children

And some quite nice carved stones

I then drove up to Inverary, which is effectively a new town built in the late 18th century so it didn’t spoil the view of the Dukes of Argyll castle.

 

The kirk had a spire but it wasn’t safe so it was demolished.  But the kirk is most interesting because it was built as two kirks, english speaking and gaelic speaking.  Sadly the gaelic end is now a hall/badminton court.

A nice old garage

I then visited Auchindrain, described as the last farming township; a little settlement where the buildings are being preserved.  Sadly I was still uninspired by this. 

The best thing was the hens whose colour matched the hen house

However my day was fully recovered by a visit to Crarae Gardens, planted in a rocky gorge with, inter alia, some wonderful rhododendrons

The last few pictures are cheats because they were in the Plant Sales section, but the colours were so stunning I had to take pictures and also had to post them in the blog.

2 June Lochgilphead

Oban, McCaig’s tower

Lochgilphead is a unassuming little place but don’t knock it.

It has a campsite in the town/village, it has a selection of shops, it has a Coop and it is near the eastern end of the Crinan Canal.  I stayed there for 4 nights because it was the Queen’s Jubilee weekend and I thought that once I’d found somewhere to stop I should stay there as there would be a lot of folk drifting about looking for places to stay.

An interesting bug

The Crinan Canal.  Another bit of industrial archaeology.  9 miles long, it cuts across the top of the Kintyre Peninsula from Loch Fyne to the Sound of Jura.  It is 67 miles from Lochgilphead to the Mull of Kintyre so the canal saves a lot of sailing especially in the pre-steam days.  It was designed by John Rennie and completed in 1801 but Thomas Telford had to be brought in in 1816 to sort out collapses and some of the locks.  It is still very much in use by yachts.  And an excellent cycle.

Do they really play rugby on this pitch?

This is a complicated lock as  there is also a swing bridge

 

I got very excited about this bridge, which is retracted by winding it back on rails…

  The sea is below on the left

An artist’s haunt

Another swing bridge

Crinan

Back at the eastern end, the canal actually starts at Ardrishaig which is south of Lochgilphead

 

And there is another swing bridge

 

Another view of Lochgilphead