Sun 26th April
I thought I had rested long enough in Tarbert and decided that today I would progress in my journey on towards Campbeltown. I knew the main road went along the north of the peninsula before cutting back across to Campbeltown, so thought this the most obvious route to check out. There was a smaller road on the south side of the peninsula, but I could always navigate this on the way back up. On my way out of Tarbert I noticed the café/craft centre called The Gather, that we had spotted on our walk to West Tarbert. We had discussed visiting for a cuppa, but had run out of days to do it on. I didn’t need a drink, I’d only just left after all, and was only 2 minutes out of town, but it mentioned crafts, so thought it worth a look. I always have a conflict of interests when it comes to shops and craft centres. I, like many others, are enticed by the materialistic, things that look nice, BUT… do they have a purpose? Are they just going to clutter up the house? Humans are like magpies, we see something nice and want it. But I hate the idea of wasteful items, the fact that we are a throw away society, and the horrible reality of how much ends up in landfill. I often think about how much waste one family creates over a year, then think about how much a street creates. Multiply that by thousands, millions, its uncomprehensible. But I’m not preaching, as we are all guilty of ignoring it and not acting. When I moved out of my house I got rid of a lot of stuff, and I did have a lot of stuff! Things I hadn’t used in ages, things that had sentimental value, but why? Stupid reasons. So, I tried to be strict with what went and what I kept. And once I’d got rid of stuff, I tried to retrain my thinking not to buy things for the sake of it. I lived in a van now anyway so didn’t have space for hardly anything. But to train your brain just to say no is hard, or is it easy, if you don’t even give yourself the option to buy it. The other side of my dilemma is that I appreciate craft, handmade things, art. I like making things and being creative myself, so want to support others who have a talent and have spent time making something. But again, I can’t buy anything due to having no space in the van. So now I try to treat shops like art galleries and as inspiration. I try to spend time looking at the objects and wondering how they are made, appreciating how much time the person has spent on it, why they made it the way they made it. And possibly how I can use these techniques when I next make something. This craft centre was nice to look at, there were some local artists work on display, so I appreciated it and moved on.
As I left Tarbert the road gained altitude and gave some good views back up the neck of West Loch Tarbert. I thought it would be nice to find a stop on the way to have some lunch and I had already tried to check on the map where there may be a beach suitable. The sun was shining, again (very lucky), and was glinting on the sea, so beautiful. I pulled down the side road towards Tayinloan where there was a small ferry port to take cars over to Gigha. The parking here was free, which I had been told would be the case in most of Scotland, very refreshing. The Kintyre way is a 100 mile long walk that goes from Tarbert to just north of Mull of Kintyre. We had walked some of it when we did the castle walk earlier in the week, and it also passed along the beach I had stopped at. I decided that after some lunch, I’d walk the route along the beach and back again. The beach was very peaceful, hardly anyone was on it, just the odd dog walker and a couple of people with backpacks, assuming they were doing the whole 100 miles. It was really quite rocky by the shoreline, but the sea had hardly any movement, lapping gently onto the rocks. As I walked along I spotted a large cornucopia shaped shell, oooh lovely! I’d brought a Tupperware box and a sandwich bag with me today, after not being prepared when we walked along the beach the other day. I popped the shell in the box. After another minute I spotted another lovely shell… then another, and another. Now I knew at this point I wouldn’t be able to keep them all and I couldn’t continue picking up every nice shell I spotted. So, I curbed it once the bag and box were relatively full. I reached the end of the beach and sat at a picnic bench for a little while and took pictures of my shells. I thought if I end up having to chuck them at some point (due to lack of space) then I have the pictures to draw from. They were great colours and textures.
I walked back along the beach to the van and continued driving along the main road into Campbeltown. The views continued to be amazing, that you just want to keep taking pictures, but of course you can’t, so its best just to take it in and appreciate it in the moment. I drove through the town as I had clocked there was a point of interest on the map that had parking, Davaar Island Parking. Once I got there it was the perfect spot, free, and overlooking the Campbeltown Bay and Davaar Island. I just had time to make a spot of tea, before I had to go back into town to the cinema. Last night I had been looking online to see what there was in Campbeltown and it came up with one of Scotland’s oldest picture houses. It looked quaint, and I like an old small cinema. I went to one in Bath while I was walking LEJOG 20 years ago. Shrewsbury has a great one in the market square, and I went to one in Keswick last summer when on holiday there. Both Keswick and Campbeltown were of an art nouveau style, inspired from the time they were first opened. The film I went to see was called ‘The North’ and was about two men who were embarking on walking the West Highland Way and Cape Wrath Trail after having not seen each other for 10 years. It was a lovely, what seemed like a low budget, film, that was a little slow to start but I soon understood the style of film, and as the story developed I became invested. There was limited speaking, the acting set the mood along with the scenery. I have a friend currently walking the Cape Wrath Trail and although I’ve seen pictures from her social media posts, it was good to see footage of the trail and a depiction that showed how unforgiving it can be. I met my friend when I was walking some of the South West Coast path and she was walking LEJOG about 4 years ago. She went on to do wilderness training abroad and has done so well, and continues to do so on the Cape Wrath Trail.