Day 167: Carradale Bay to Campbeltown
Distance: 15.30 miles
Ascent: 1921 feet
Weather: Overcast & Breezy
Accommodation: Campbeltown Bunkhouse
When I woke up this morning, slightly to my surprise, it was raining moderately heavily. Fortunately by the time I had packed everything up and got out of the tent the rain had stopped. As per normal up here just after it has rained and when you are sheltered from the wind the midges come out. I have found the best thing to do is ignore them and keep moving and then they seem to not land on you too much.
I set off optimistically in dry weather set up and firstly had to head upstream to cross the river. There were actually some stepping stones ( or water stones as they appear to be called up here) but they were incredibly slippery and not at all flat so I quickly decided against using them. A couple hundred meters later I passed a woman and she said a good proportion of the people who try to use them end up falling in the river. Fortunately it wasn’t far till a track took me back onto the Kintyre Way and I crossed the river at Dippen.
The Kintyre Way follows the shore here and the sign told me it was tidal and to consult the monthly tide table below, the slight issue was that the month shown was December 2016! The tide appeared midway between high and low and I presumed I could get along. Slightly surprisingly for a named path the route involved a fair amount of rock scrambling, and at one point I thought I had lost the Kintyre Way and suddenly spotted one of the familiar blue poles which told me I hadn’t. Just shy of Torrisdale Bay the path heads up onto the road which I would be following for the rest of the day.
Fortunately, though rain threatened all day it never returned and if I’m honest there is not much more to mention in this diary all the way to Campbeltown. The road walking was perfectly fine, with fairly nice hills and an alright coastline but nothing spectacular or I felt worthy of writing about. After passing though Peninver it was not long till I turned the corner and into Campbeltown Loch from where I could see the fairly picturesque (though in parts quite ugly) town of Campbeltown, as well as the Island Davaar which has a low tide link allowing people to walk across to it. Campbeltown is the only town on the Kintyre peninsula, and it's port is well used with fishing boats, yachts but more impressively timber distribution and as i walked by there was a huge pile of pine timber of one of the jetties.
Campbeltown was my finish point for today and I wanted to stay nearby so I could make use of the Wi-Fi as the signal has been poor around this penisula for admin. I was going to ask a pub if I could pitch in their garden and use Wi-Fi, and then I spotted a hostel and for the first time in a while midweek I decided just to book in there.
I had arrived early and the main thing I was keen on now I was booked in was cooking myself a large healthy meal, and I am now making the most of the Wi-Fi and rarely allowing myself a couple of hours not to think about the walk at all.
A good if not overly exciting day and it felt more like I walked 5 miles than over 15.
