Sometimes the best trips begin without much of a plan.
We left home with a car containing a two-person backpacking tent, sleeping bags, a small gas stove and enough equipment to wild camp if necessary. From the library I had borrowed maps and guides covering Arran, Bute and the surrounding area, supplementing the pile of Scottish maps and books I already owned.
The broad idea was to carry on exploring parts of western Scotland I had previously visited with the children.
Beyond that, very little was fixed.
There was no accommodation booked. No sequence of places we had to visit. Even Arran and Bute which had been somewhere near the centre of our thinking, was really only a possibility.
The weather forecast wasn’t particularly encouraging either.
But this wasn’t intended to be a trip where good weather was a prerequisite. It was a holiday, an unplanned road trip and, perhaps, an opportunity to slow down for a while.
We could hike if it was dry, be tourists if it wasn’t, camp if we found somewhere suitable and change direction whenever we wanted.
Which is more or less exactly what happened.
Gretna Green: deciding where to go
By Sunday morning we were around Gretna Green looking at maps and wondering what to do next.
Bute began to look interesting.
The ferry from Wemyss Bay to Rothesay didn’t require a reservation. We had camping equipment in the car and Scottish access rights gave us the option of lightweight wild camping if necessary.
So we headed west.
It was only once we were on our way that the idea of spending a few nights on Bute began to take shape.
Our first attempt at sightseeing wasn’t especially successful. We reached Ardencraig Gardens shortly before its advertised closing time, only to discover that it was already shutting.
We arrived.
We saw.
And then it closed.
Not exactly the grand beginning to our island adventure.
But it didn’t matter particularly. We had a flask, somewhere new to explore and absolutely no schedule to keep.
More significantly, the worsening weather forecast persuaded us that pitching our little tent wasn’t necessarily the most attractive option.
We found an Airbnb at Kilchattan Bay, at the southern end of the island, and booked it almost on the spot.
That decision would shape the next three days.
Kilchattan Bay: an otter five metres away
Kilchattan Bay turned out to be a wonderful base.
After settling into the flat, wandering around the village, cooking dinner and spending rather longer than expected trying to persuade the intermittent Wi-Fi to work, we headed out for an evening walk.
The flat overlooked the shore, and even sitting inside we could watch birds working along the waterline. Some were slightly too far away to identify confidently, but there were oystercatchers, juvenile shags and plenty of other activity.
Then, on our walk, came one of the wildlife encounters of the trip.
We had just passed the last houses at the southern end of Kilchattan and were chatting about how many Saunders Lakeland Mountain Marathons Irina and I had done together.
Suddenly something large shot across the road about five metres in front of us.
An otter.
Not a distant shape through binoculars or a head briefly appearing offshore, but a substantial animal running directly across our path.
There wasn’t time for a photograph.
There didn’t need to be.
It was one of those encounters that is probably more memorable precisely because it happened unexpectedly and lasted only seconds.
A little farther along the coast we also began noticing the geology.
Layers of red, pale and almost black rock had been tilted steeply, some standing like walls while softer bands had eroded into deep slots. It was immediately obvious that something interesting was going on beneath our feet, even before we knew much about the details.
For a first evening on an island we had barely decided to visit that morning, it was a promising start.
Around the southern tip of Bute
The following morning we were out before breakfast.
From Kilchattan Bay we followed the coast south on a clockwise circuit around the bottom of the island.
My Strava recording eventually showed 9.37 km with 228 metres of ascent, but the statistics don’t really capture the character of the walk.
The coast became progressively wilder as we left the village behind.
We passed the extraordinary tilted sedimentary rocks around Hawk’s Neb, continued towards Glencallum Bay, and eventually reached the lighthouse.
For somewhere relatively close to Rothesay and the populated Clyde coast, it felt surprisingly remote.
From there we turned inland, passing the wonderfully named Pool of Healing, before reaching the ruins of St Blane’s Chapel.
This was the first of several historical connections that would gradually start linking apparently unrelated parts of the trip.
Bute contains layers of history in much the same way that its coastline contains layers of rock: prehistoric sites, early Christian remains, medieval buildings, Viking stories and the infrastructure of Victorian tourism all sitting remarkably close together.
After St Blane’s we completed the circuit back to Kilchattan and finally had breakfast.
It had been a substantial start to the day, but there was still plenty of Monday left.
Rothesay: Vikings and Victorian extravagance
That afternoon we drove into Rothesay.
We parked for free on Chapelhill Road, wrote and posted a postcard, and then headed to Rothesay Castle.
Only a month earlier we had been at the Viking Festival in Largs.
Suddenly the history we had encountered there acquired another dimension.
The Norwegian attacks on Rothesay Castle and the events around the Battle of Largs formed part of the same struggle for control of the western seaboard. Standing inside Rothesay Castle, with the harbour and Clyde beyond it, made the strategic importance of Bute much easier to understand.
In a world where travelling by sea was often easier than travelling by land, these islands weren’t peripheral.
They were part of the transport network.
That same relationship with the Clyde appeared again later in a completely different form.
One of the unexpected highlights of Rothesay was its Victorian public toilets.
There aren’t many holidays where public conveniences make the list of memorable attractions, but these deserve to.
The elaborate marble, mosaics, polished fittings and extraordinary semicircle of urinals are gloriously excessive.
Yet they also tell a serious story.
Railways brought visitors from Glasgow to the Clyde steamers, and the steamers brought enormous numbers of people to Rothesay. The town became a major Victorian resort, and even its public facilities reflected the confidence and prosperity of that period.
From there we visited St Mary’s Chapel, another fragment of Bute’s religious history.
Having stood at St Blane’s that morning, seeing St Mary’s later the same day created a connection that would have been easy to miss had we simply ticked the two places off independently.
We eventually headed to the Co-op for provisions and returned to Kilchattan.
Our supposedly spontaneous night on Bute was rapidly becoming something more substantial.
Walking to Mount Stuart
By Tuesday morning we had decided to stay a third night.
One of the things I liked about Airbnb was how unexpectedly easy that was. The flat was available, we submitted a change through the app and our stay was extended without having to make another booking.
That gave us a full day without worrying about packing.
We used it to walk to Mount Stuart.
Rather than drive, we left the flat after breakfast and followed the West Island Way north from Kilchattan Bay.
It became the longest walk of the trip.
Approaching somewhere on foot changes the experience.
Instead of Mount Stuart being an attraction reached from a car park, it became the destination at the end of a journey through the Bute landscape.
We arrived via the coast and spent much of the afternoon there.
First came the house, with its extraordinary architecture and interiors.
Then the gardens.
Then the shore.
We didn’t hurry.
Eventually we caught the 5pm bus back to Kilchattan, which also meant we didn’t have to turn the walk into an out-and-back.
After dinner we went out again at dusk.
This time one of the things that caught our attention was another geological curiosity: striking hexagonal sandstone pillars along the shore.
Bute seemed determined to keep producing things we hadn’t expected to find.
One last morning on Bute
Wednesday began with a run.
I headed up from Kilchattan towards the lower reservoirs, gaining enough height for views back towards the bay, and slightly surprising one of the aircraft carriers in the Clyde bellow us, before returning via the community orchard and picking a couple of apples.
Then it really was time to pack.
But we weren’t quite ready to leave the island directly.
We had discovered that Ascog Hall Garden and Fernery was on our route north.
Given our interest in Victorian engineering, architecture and gardens, it seemed worth a look.
It turned out to be much more than that.
The restored Victorian fernery was wonderful: slightly eccentric, atmospheric and a reminder of the extraordinary Victorian fascination with ferns, glasshouses and collecting plants from around the world.
That fascination would reappear later in the trip.
From Ascog we crossed to Ettrick Bay.
The café was extremely popular, and after eating we spent some time around the beach with the binoculars.
By then we had stopped trying to identify every bird we saw.
There were waders, seabirds and plenty of things to watch, but the pleasure was increasingly simply in being outside and noticing what was around us.
Eventually we drove north through Bute towards Rhubodach.
Instead of returning through Rothesay, we took the tiny ferry to Colintraive.
Leaving an island by a small ferry feels different from driving away from somewhere.
Perhaps that is why the ferry journeys themselves became one of my highlights of the trip.
They gave it an island-hopping rhythm even though we never ultimately reached Arran.
Glendaruel: the overnight stop that became three nights
Our original thinking had been to continue from Cowal using the Portavadie–Tarbert ferry, then cross from Claonaig to Lochranza on Arran.
There was one problem.
The Portavadie ferry wasn’t running the following day.
Rather than drive all the way around Loch Fyne, we started looking for somewhere to stay.
That brought us to Glendaruel Caravan Park.
Initially it was simply a practical solution.
We had the backpacking tent with us. The site accepted small tents. It was in roughly the right direction.
Then we arrived.
The facilities were excellent, with showers, toilets, a kettle and somewhere to charge our phones. More importantly in the wet weather, there was a covered shelter with picnic benches where we could cook and sit.
It immediately changed how we felt about camping there.
Instead of enduring a wet night before moving on, we could actually settle in.
So we stayed.
For three nights.
Our food reflected the improvised nature of the trip. We weren’t carrying an elaborate camping kitchen. Rice could be boiled on the stove, sauces heated in the campsite microwave, and eggs and beans acquired locally.
Simple food, eaten somewhere dry while rain worked its way down the glen, was quite enough.
And because the campsite was inexpensive, there wasn’t the feeling that every day had to be packed with activity to justify the accommodation cost.
We could simply be there.
Kilmodan and Tighnabruaich
The next morning another ferry warning changed our plans.
There was a yellow warning on the Tarbert service, with the possibility of afternoon sailings being cancelled at short notice.
Our plan had been to have a day trip as foot passengers over although a day trip involving a ferry that might not bring us back seemed an unnecessary risk.
So we stayed on Cowal.
Our first stop was Kilmodan and its collection of carved stones.
This continued the historical thread that had begun with St Blane’s and St Mary’s on Bute.
From there we headed to Tighnabruaich.
Rain came and went in heavy showers, but that almost suited the place.
We walked the waterfront, looked at the buildings, visited the shop for eggs and beans and periodically retreated into cafés.
Our favourite was Kyle’s Gallery, particularly for a bowl of wholesome soup.
Tighnabruaich also brought us back to the Clyde-steamer story.
The old pier building, with its unusual combination of waiting-room, tearoom and accommodation, made much more sense when viewed from the water side.
A sign advertising village attractions still faces towards the pier.
The message is effectively the same as it would have been generations ago:
you have arrived by boat; here is what the village has to offer.
That connection with Rothesay was fascinating and the fact they still had tourists visiting by paddle boat.
Both communities were transformed by access from Glasgow and the Clyde, but developed on very different scales.
The people you meet when you stop
One of the things we would have missed by passing through Glendaruel was the people.
Our first interesting camping neighbour was a Canadian travelling from Glasgow on a gravel bike, with about a month available for a large loop around Scotland.
Later we met a Polish research biologist and her recently graduated son.
They had just completed the West Highland Way and were taking a rest day before heading onwards towards Mull.
We spent time talking under the campsite shelter while everyone cooked, dried things and waited for the weather to decide what it was going to do.
Those conversations became part of the character of the campsite.
Had we been constantly trying to reach the next destination, they probably wouldn’t have happened.
Ancient Glendaruel
By Friday we had stopped treating Glendaruel as somewhere we were stuck because of a ferry.
We explored directly from the campsite.
First came a short morning walk past a waterfall.
Then a longer loop down the quiet road behind the site, including Lucknow Gate, the surviving entrance associated with the former Glendaruel House estate. The house itself burned down in 1970.
Later we headed through the village and into the forest.
Here the landscape suddenly moved much further back in time.
We visited St Modan’s Well, associated with the early saint after whom Kilmodan takes its name.
Then came a Neolithic chambered cairn.
Then prehistoric cup-and-ring markings.
Within a relatively short walk we had moved from a Victorian estate to early Christianity and then several thousand years further back into prehistory.
Eventually the rain returned properly.
We returned to the campsite and spent most of the afternoon doing very little beyond eating, talking and relaxing.
It was one of the least productive afternoons of the holiday.
It was also exactly what we needed.
Benmore and another Victorian fernery
On Saturday morning we finally packed the wet-weather camping equipment into the car in the improving weather and left Glendaruel.
We were heading for Hamilton, south of Glasgow, but there was one obvious stop on the way.
Benmore Botanic Garden.
A few days earlier we had loved the small Victorian fernery at Ascog.
Benmore took the same Victorian passion and put it into a completely different landscape.
We made an anti-clockwise circuit of the grounds.
This wasn’t simply a wander around flowerbeds.
The garden climbs into woodland, with enormous trees, rhododendron collections, moss-covered ground and views across the estate.
The interpretation around mosses was particularly interesting.
After days of rain in western Scotland, it was somehow appropriate to learn that the mild, extremely wet climate makes this part of Britain internationally important for bryophytes.
A red squirrel appeared among the trees, adding another wildlife moment to a trip that had begun with an otter.
We also found the Silent Space, somewhere deliberately set aside for stopping and listening rather than rushing onwards.
And then there was the restored Benmore Fernery.
Where Ascog had been intimate and almost secretive, Benmore’s fernery was architectural and dramatic, built into the hillside.
Seeing both within a few days felt like another accidental connection running through the journey.
Eventually we left Benmore and continued to Hunters Quay, where another ferry took us across the Clyde to Gourock.
From there we drove on to Hamilton.
Hamilton and the journey home
After days of islands, glens, tents and ferries, the Holiday Inn Express in Hamilton felt rather conventional.
Which was probably no bad thing.
Sunday morning began quietly with some yoga before we pointed the car south.
We stopped at Gretna again, almost where this particular adventure had begun. A week earlier we had been looking at maps and wondering where to go next. This time there was nothing to decide.
We made sandwiches and ate them from the back of the car before carrying on home.
It felt an appropriately simple ending to a trip that had largely worked because we hadn’t tried too hard to plan it.
There is still plenty more of this corner of Scotland to explore, not least Arran, so I’m fairly certain we’ll be back.