Loch Fyne – Claire's Blog

Monday 5th August 2019

Today we had a longer day out, heading north to visit the Crauchan power station. Along the route realised I had left my memory card in the laptop so only had my phone to use for photo’s doh!

The satnav didn’t take us the way I had intended to go and instead sent us up along Loch Fyne so we took the opportunity for an unplanned visit to Inveraray where I picked up some Edinburgh rock to take back as a gift. As we started to head back to the car the rain started, and it was heavy, luckily I had my waterproof jacket and an umbrella for Gavin in my bag.

We continued on to Crauchan power station but unfortunately when we got there they had no more tour slots available 🙁 We are planning on being back up this way on Thursday to visit Oban (only half an hour away) so have booked on a midday tour for then, we can ring and cancel if we change our minds. They do have a rather nice cafe at the power station so we had some lunch before starting the journey back.

For the journey back we consulted the map rather than trusting the satnav and we did manage to find the road I wanted to go on. It was 24 miles on a single track road, which I hadn’t realised, alongside Loch Awe with beautiful views. Fortunately we didn’t meet too much traffic and there were enough passing places, but it wasn’t the easiest of drives.

Friday 2nd August 2019

Today was our last on the Isle of Bute, and it was lovely and sunny again. We spent the morning in Rothesay watching the ferries and boats coming an going before some lunch in one of the harbour front cafes.

We then drove up to Rhubodach at the north of the Isle of Bute to catch the roll on roll off ferry across to Colintraive. The ferry journey took less than 5 minutes.

Kyle of Bute and on the mainland (left) half way down you can see the ferry that goes across to Isle of Bute on the right – very short crossing.

Back on the mainland continued our journey over into Argyll, where we got a great view out of the Kyles of Bute which flow down each side of the Isle of Bute and could see the ferry we had just been on. We made our way down to Portavadie to catch our second ferry of the day, taking us across Loch Fyne to Tarbert. It is possible to drive around the loch but it adds an extra 90 miles onto the journey.

We stopped for a short while in Tarbert which has a very pretty harbour with lots of small fishing and pleasure boats. We walked up the hill to see Tarbert Church.

Gavin did a great job driving from Tarbert down a narrow single lane road with passing places to Carradale on the Kintyre peninsula. On the way we took a small detour to visit Skipness Castle. Skipness is also where the ferry goes across to Arran from, somewhere we don’t have time to visit on this holiday.

Tag: Loch Fyne

Powerless

Ferry to Ferry