Seaside Special - A honeymoon and a fast car: Argyll & Bute

Before I first visited Argyll - so before 1996 - I had imagined it to be characteristically highland Scotland: full of muscular, bare crags heaped upon each other with scree slopes crashing down into lochs overlooked by impossibly romantic ruined castles. This betrayed uncharacteristically rank research on my part. Argyll was not like that at all. I usually made an exhaustive study of the nooks and crannies of any of my potentials destination long before making a booking. On this occasion, I was under-prepared and poorly informed. But as this was a honeymoon stay, maybe other matters were legitimately clouding my mind. I do not wish to suggest that I was in any way disappointed with the geography of the area. Far from it. I was thoroughly pleasantly surprised. Our cottage was in a remote spot off the road between Crinan and Achnamara, perched above Loche Choille-Barr. The one-bedroom bungalow, converted from a threshing barn, had acres of land sloping away to the shore. The air was s...