Sunday, September 06, 2009

Kintyre Way: Tarbert to Clonaig

N.B. This is the first of 6 posts about my trip to Scotland in 2009.
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The Kintyre Way is on a peninsula in southwestern Scotland and is apparently one of the newer walks. The waymarked route runs north to south, but zigzags across the peninsula east and west. We stayed in Tarbert overnight, then strolled down to the edge of town, just a few doors past The Corner Bistro where we'd enjoyed dinner the night before, to begin the walk.

A pleasant initial ascent gave us a view of the harbor:


About 5 minutes into the walk, we took a small detour to see this ruined castle up close:

Once we got there, it turned out to be mostly facade -- much like those Hollywood sets, for instance a street in ye olde fashioned Western town for the big showdown sequence. (Yes, my Disney and Universal Studios visits made a big impression on me - also, I think they played with this concept in Blazing Saddles.) Still, it was cool to see this castle turned haven for the local flora:


As we continued on, the paths wound up and around hills flooded with heather. We were often rewarded by glimpses of the sea and the hilly islands behind them:


Day 1 was a relatively short day, about 10 miles. We made it to Clonaig on foot, then got ahead of ourselves by car and actually stayed in Clachan.

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