Kintyre – sea and sunsets…

We left Benderloch by lunchtime and started on our journey towards Kintyre.  We decided to take a couple of detours down what appeared to be interesting roads on our OS map.

The first was down the rugged and indented coastline to the east of the island of Jura.  The verges were totally covered in tall wildflowers – Common Valerian and Meadowsweet, I believe, in this photo:

We crossed the Crinan Canal at Bellanoch, to which we will return later.

The waters of the loch, Caol Scotnish, beside the heavily wooded Fairy Isles (what a wonderful name!) were deep green, possibly something to do with a certain type of seaweed.

Shags

Strange bunches of cones on these Spruces – not sure which one though

Tayvallich has a busy harbour with many moorings and, but also, unfortunately, a field full of static caravans which do little to enhance the place.

We drove on down the peninsular but eventually turned back and saw this House Martin on a telegraph wire.

We stopped at the Tayvallich Coffee Shop on the way back and had a ‘Wimbledon Tea’ on the deck overlooking the harbour.  Very nice but far too much cream!.

We loved this little sea-faring dog in his special life jacket and watching the boats coming and going was interesting.

We then followed the Crinan Canal to its end – so many locks in a short distance – down to Ardrishaig and then took another B road detour (a mistake as the road was bad and the scenery indifferent) down the west coast and up again before heading straight down from Tarbert to Killegruer Caravan Site where we were staying for a couple of nights.

It was a busy site, with statics and quite a few caravans, not very widely spaced, but our view was magnificent – we couldn’t have been nearer the beach, as this picture will show.

There were plenty of seabirds to be seen, including a whole gang of Red-Breasted Mergansers, but we were being treated to a fantastic sunset and that’s what we spent the evening photographing.

From pale tangerine to fiery orange and back to pink grapefruit – what an amazing show!

Our neighbour’s patriotic Saltire adding to the picture