A Son of the Rock

After Inveraray it was off round the headwaters of Loch Fyne. Hooking left at Strachur we went down the Cowal Peninsula. This took us along the shores of the stunning fresh water Loch Eck. The road runs along the (north) east side. In the late afternoon the water looked black in places, reflecting the hills on the other side like a mirror. A beautiful spot for a canoeing or fishing holiday if you’re into those.

Scotland is well served for lochs such as these; usually with steep sides. To my mind fresh water lochs are so much more scenic than sea lochs as they do not have margins scabbed by brown seaweed.

Destination was Dunoon.

I’d only ever visited Dunoon by ferry boat/paddle steamer before – probably en route to Rothesay on a “Doon The Watter” trip and I don’t remember actually setting foot in it.

Its heyday is obviously long past. The main street was shabby and a bit forlorn and the pavements up the town were festooned with weeds.

The Cowal peninsula was the territory of Clan Lamont. In our wanderings we found a memorial to the Lamont dead of the Civil Wars of the 1640s. (Wiki has this titled as The English Civil War but it was way more complicated than that with various shifting alliances involving the whole of the British Isles.)

The plaque with the names was a bit corroded so they are difficult to pick out.

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Down by the seafront just across from the ferry terminal at the pier there is a memorial to the Great War and World War 2 containing names of all those from the peninsula who died. As I recall, it (unusually) gave the names of nurses. Once again (as was also true at Inveraray) vastly more names for the Great War than the later one.

Round the coast, at Sandbank, there was another, this time dedicated to the more local dead of Sandbank and Ardnadam.

In days gone by, in the background to this memorial, you would have been able to see swathes of US Navy ships, or at least the anchorages they used, for this is Holy Loch which housed (harboured?) a Polaris missile submarine base. Note this is within twenty-five or so miles as the crow flies from Glasgow. Would such a thing ever have been allowed that short distance from London if the requisite deep water had been as close to it?*

*Edited to add:- Britain’s nuclear submarine fleet is based even closer to Glasgow; at Faslane in Gare Loch (the Gareloch as it’s known locally.)