Crinan

Yesterday was too much cycling, not enough lazing about.  I blame the planners: sitting in their warm houses, not paying attention to details like contours, unpaved roads and so on.
Today will be different. Less at London pace and more at the pace of the Highlands.  For a start, the 20 extra miles I had to do yesterday to find accommodation is 20 miles less today.
As I left the B&B, the owner, Mark, was fixing a quad bike, an operation that needed a six foot crowbar and a couple of sledgehammers. Ardfern is on a sea loch, and I cycled down to the end of the peninsula alongside Loch Craignish among a profusion of flowers - everything seems to have flowered at the same time.  There was nothing at the end of the road except a few canoeists, preparing for an expedition among a garish explosion of primary-coloured canoes and kit.  It was a lovely seven miles before I returned to Ardfern for my pannier and set out to conquer the beallach (=big hill) over to the next valley and Kilmartin, where I found a museum and café and sat outside in the sunshine with a few midges for company.

At Kilmartin I told a couple of cyclists about my plan to use a cycle track on the way to Crinan. "It's a bit rough; ok for mountain bikes" they daid, eyeing my bike dubiously. 

It was fine.  Following a wooded stream, then a line of Bronze age burial cairns, each built of thousands of football-sized boulders. What effort must they have taken, in days when survival was a daily struggle?

A bit later I stopped to photograph a bluebell-carpeted wood.  "Hello Simon".   My landlady from Ardfern had found me for a second time: small world.  

The last few miles were along the towpath of the Crinan Canal, built for Glasgow-bound ships to bypass the Mull of Kintyre and emerging 9 miles later at Lochgilphead, at the head of Loch, er, Gilp.  My bit of the canal wound its way along the estuary, where, imbrobably, four youngsters seemed to be enjoying a swim.

Tiny Crinan is a picturesque spot with a couple of locks onto the loch (see what I did there?), a mini lighthouse, sunshine, sea boats, and a convenient lunchtime cafe.