Having enjoyed my visit to the Isle of Arran in the Spring, I wondered where else I could reach by rail and have as good a time exploring the local area. Thus my third visit to midge-free Scotland this year was centred on Dunoon, which is on the Cowal Peninsula – it feels like an island but is actually on the mainland, reached by a Calmac ferry from Gourock and I travelled there from Newcastle for only £11.65 on an Advance Purchase ticket with a railcard. The journey back was only slightly more expensive at £16.60 travelling via Glasgow and Carlisle.
Dunoon is a pleasant town, although its glory days of catering for visitors from Glasgow sailing “doon the watter” are well gone. I was amused by the sign, pictured, of the attractions of Dunoon with the ones no longer available painted over in white, but still readable. I stayed for three nights in the Argyll Hotel which was a Victorian three story building with one room at the top of a tower at the front (ask for room 126), and including a modern restaurant.
In accordance with my objective to minimise carbon emissions on these “Places to Go”, I planned to use local buses to travel about, avoiding car hire or taxis. Vehicles are provided by West Coast Motors, a mixture of express coaches, single deck buses and minibuses. On the Saturday, I purchased on line the Dunoon/Cowal 24 hour ticket which covers Portavadie(ferry port for Tarbert to the west) and Inveraray to the north. Using the bus stop outside the hotel, I joined punctual and clean minibus 486 to Inveraray.
I used my Historic Houses pass to visit Inveraray Castle, home of the Dukes of Argyll. The gardens are excellent, and the house itself, contained between four huge turrets, better still, with armour, ceramics, ancient kitchens and state rooms and ghost stories all to be enjoyed. Then it was over to the town to visit the old jail, which told the story of many penitentiaries in Scotland, and included a court room where cases could be hear sitting amongst waxwork figures. I crept in and out to avoid invading their space.
Having toured the jail, I was feeling hungry and ready to ride on bus 486 to the top of Loch Fyne for the Oyster Bar. I had four Oysters for lunch, prepared and served by several passengers who used the morning bus there with me. As Hector Bolitho wrote: “Oysters are the most tender and delicate of all seafoods. They stay in bed all day and night. They never work or take exercise, are stupendous drinkers, and wait for their meals to come to them.” Delicious!
There was a later bus from the Oyster Bar back to Dunoon, to take the staff back home on the way, but I had decided to strike out on the Mull of Kintyre and waited for the afternoon express coach from Glasgow to Campbelltown to take me to Tarbert, a picturesque portwhich I could have done with more time to explore. The Oyster Bar was a request stop so I booked on line on my phone just in case, and the journey was a steep £14, given that I had travelled from Newcastle for less than this. The ferry landing for Portavadie was on the road out of Tarbert to the East and by the time I reached it I had no wish to retrace my steps back and forth again, so I waited for the last ferry of the day to Portavadie at 1800, which connected into the last bus 478 back to Dunoon.
Hold tight for part two!
