Road to the isles, 28th June, the Crinan Canal

Following our soggy night we were worried about moving the van off our campsite the next morning, but as we were camped on sand the ground had drained quickly.
Rain was still falling as we set off north, finally turning to cross the Kintyre peninsula and meet the main road to Lochgoilhead where we came across the Crinan Canal. This was built to cut across the top of the peninsula so that ships would not have to sail all the way round to get from the north into the Clyde. A road follows the course of the canal to the west coast and we followed this route and came across a lovely lock basin in Dunardry where yachts were negotiating their way through. By this time the rain had dried up although the sky was still very overcast.

We watched as a yacht came though to a lower level. There are 15 lochs along the stretch of the canal and it must take a day to negotiate them all.

To one side of the Lock there were some stone ruins which are the remains of the Linnet Shed. The Linnet was a passenger boat that took tourists for rides through the canal. She was built in 1866 and plied her passage here until 1929. She was wrecked in a gale three years later.

We carried on driving until we came to the sea and the small settlement of Crinan where the canal reaches the Atlantic ocean. There were a couple of Clyde puffers moored up and a Tesco van was making a delivery to them, so they must have been getting ready to leave the dock.