Day 4, Garlieston, Dumfries and Galloway to Kilchrist Castle, Kintyre, 241 miles.
To get from Garlieston to my holiday cottage in Kintyre required driving a long loop up through Ayrshire to cross the Clyde on the Erskine Bridge, up the west side of Loch Lomond, around the tops of Loch Long and Loch Fyne and south again via Inveraray and Lochgilphead to Tarbert and further south to Campbeltown. With traffic, a fuel stop, occasional pauses to stretch the legs and admire the scenery it took most of the day. Taking it at a fairly relaxed pace made for a quite pleasant journey through nice country. Final stop before reaching my destination was Tesco in Campbeltown to stock up on provisions for the next 4 days.
Late in the afternoon I arrived at Kilchrist Castle Cottages, about 10 minutes drive south of Campbeltown. The cottages are in a separate compound to the rear of the castle accessed down an unsurfaced track and set amongst open fields. The castle itself is a private residence so not open to the public and only glimpsed through the trees surrounding it. MacLeod cottage would be my home for the next few days, a wee detached single storey building with one bedroom, a sitting room with kitchenette, and a rather cramped shower room and toilet. All I’d need for a short stay and conveniently located to explore Kintyre. What was less convenient was finding the handwritten note next to a bottle of cheap plonk offered as an apology for the fridge not working and the suggestion that I could use a fridge in the laundry at the other end of the site. I’d really have appreciated knowing that before I arrived with 3 days worth of breakfast supplies and salad. Even a message in the morning would have allowed me to plan accordingly. Looking back at the previous reviews for the cottage later I saw that the non-working fridge had been reported to the owners by a previous renter in April so it’s not like it had just broken that day. At least the wine was red rather than white.
Other than the fridge issue it was a nice place to stay and when the sun eventually went down proved to have quite a dark sky with many stars visible to the naked eye. Quite a treat for someone from the light polluted south of England.
Day 5, Mull of Kintyre Lighthouse and the southern end of the Kintyre peninsula.
I had scouted out a couple of places on the map to visit. First was Mull of Kintyre Lighthouse. There’s a car park about 1.3 miles from the lighthouse and then you can walk down the private access road to the clifftop lighthouse site with views all the way to Northern Ireland. Getting to that car park is an adventure in itself along about five miles of narrow single track roads with steep hills, tight bends, obstructive sheep, and terrific scenery. Eventually the road ends at a small parking area before a gate with a sign that says “End of Public Road Turn Here”. From here on you’re on foot. The tarmac service road heads steeply down almost the whole way to the lighthouse gate, with several hairpin bends and the lighthouse appearing and disappearing from view. It was a gloriously sunny, hot day and much less windy than I’d expected as I walked down the steep road, all the while with the vague feeling that I was going to regret this idea on the way back up!
The views down to the lighthouse and across to Rathlin Island are very picturesque and occasionally a fishing boat would pass trailing a white wake on the deep blue water. It took around half an hour to get to the bottom, or at least the gate to the lighthouse compound. Apparently you used to be able to get right to the lighthouse itself but these days the gate is firmly locked shut.
I had the place to myself too, at least until I got to the bottom when after about ten minutes I was joined by two Dutch motorcaravanners, an English guy, and their Good Doggos. We had a brief chat and I let them start their ascent while I chilled out for a while. When I could put it off no longer I began my slow way back up the hill. It was still warm and sunny and there’s no shelter to speak of anywhere on the road so I took it steady, counting out 100 paces and stopping for breath, taking a few minutes rest and a swig of water every 300 paces or so until suddenly I was back at the top, a bit warm but not completely knackered. It took about twice as long to get up as it did to go down.
Off the road up on the hillside is a memorial for the RAF Chinook helicopter crash in 1994 which claimed the lives of all 25 passengers and 4 crew and spawned a few conspiracy theories since the passengers were all from the security services. There was also some controversy over the findings of the air accident inquiry, an RAF board of inquiry ruled that it was impossible to establish the exact cause of the accident but this ruling was overturned by two senior reviewing officers, who stated that the pilots were guilty of gross negligence for flying too fast and too low in thick fog. A later Parliamentary inquiry found the previous verdict of gross negligence on the part of the crew to be ‘unjustified’. In 2011, an independent review of the crash cleared the crew of negligence and accepted that the RAF had falsely declared compliance with regulations in relation to the aircraft’s authority to fly.
By complete coincidence when I arrived back at the car I fell into conversation with the occupant of a motorhome which had just parked in the car park who turned out to be an 80 year old former RAF helicopter pilot. Interesting chap with an informed insider’s opinion of the incident described above.
I returned along the road to the lighthouse, inevitably meeting a fuel tanker on the way at an inconvenient spot, and headed for the end of the Kintyre peninsula, the appropriately named Southend but without a long pier. I pulled into a car park by the beach at Carskey Bay and walked the short distance to Keil Caves, St. Columba’s Footsteps, St. Columba’s Well, and his church ruins. The footprints are carved into the top of a rocky outcrop, one parallel to the shore and the other at 90 degrees to it with the year 564 also incised into the rock. The history is a bit confused but likely one footprint dates from the 4th century and became associated with St. Columba who landed here briefly in 563. The second was probably added by a 19th century local mason called Daniel McIlreavie to boost the area’s association with the saint and he also added the (wrong) date.
Around 50 yards away St. Columba’s Well, a rocky bowl carved into the sloping hillside which collects not-entirely-wholesome looking water from a spring. This too may have obtained its association with the saint by way of 19th century tourism. Completing the St. Columba trio is the ruined church set along the landward side of a roughly rectangular graveyard and almost entirely overgrown so that from the footsteps it appears to be just a bunch of small trees.
The history of the caves is a little more matter of fact. Some have names such as the Great Cave, the Piper’s Cave - after the legend of a disappearing homeward bound piper who allegedly haunts the cave, and the Hermit’s Retreat. The caves were occupied on and off since prehistoric times until the late 19th century where the 1881 census records six members of the McFee and McCallum families as residents. If you enter the larger caves today you’ll find that the only residents are panicky pigeons.
From Keil I took the coast road to Southend and then the B842 back to Kilchrist for tea, dinner, and the Friday night Top Of The Pops re-runs on BBC4 with accompanying commentary on Mastodon.
Next time I go to Campbeltown, explore the east side of Kintyre, and find an unexpected castle.
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