West of Glasgow and west of the Isle of Arran, there's a long strip of land that looks to me like a cat's foot (although, as a friend pointed out, others have drawn different comparisons...). Skipness sits on the elegantly elevated heel, while the fluffy little round paw hosts Campbeltown. The whole thing is known as the Kintyre Peninsula, and was our post-Glasgow destination.

The drive from Glasgow was superb.

You skirt Loch Lomond, flirt with Loch Long (one of the multiplicity of long, narrow fingers of water that reach up into the belly of Scotland), and then stick close to Loch Fyne all the way to Lochgilphead, where The Stag will offer you a homely lunch. The views all the way are majestic.

Near Lochgilphead is the Crinan Canal, built to save mariners the hazardous passage round the peninsula. Now it's a leisure canal along which process, slightly incongruously to those of us used to more conventional vessels, large sailing boats. There's a lovely little walk that takes you along the canal for a while before projecting you up the hill, through bluebell-carpeted ancient rainforest, and leading you down again past ruined cottages. On a blue day, it's picture-perfect.







The road down the peninsula from Crinan continued to be extraordinarily beautiful, with expansive views of hills and rocky shoreline and neighbouring islands.

We stayed in a 200-year-old converted byre not far from Campbeltown, with nothing around except fields and farm animals. Admittedly, the cold of ages lurks in these sturdy walls (0.75 metres thick), and even on a mild day, you feel as though you're entering the chilled domain of a creamery, but when the evening sun is streaming in through the living-room window, and the grass outside is lit up like an emerald carpet, and birds are carolling evensong, it's pretty special, worth piling on a few layers for.




The Mull of Kintyre is the headland at the bottom of the peninsula -- the cat's front-most claw, as it were -- and of course it's the subject of the 1977 Christmas hit recorded by Paul McCartney, Wings, and the Campbeltown Pipe Band.

We'd had a conversation in Glasgow that went like this:

"Are you staying in town for the weekend?" "No, we're heading down to the Mull of Kintyre." Pause... "Can I ask for what purpose? Because it's very, very bleak..."

And I guess it is. You drive as far as you can along the single-track road, pausing often to let resting sheep heave themselves up off the tarmac and amble back to their grass. And then you clump, clump, clump down the steep hill to the lighthouse. There's definitely an ends-of-the-earth feeling. One blogger writes: "I found the landscape here quite bleak and the journey to the famous lighthouse was on a challenging single track road. The terrain was very much like the Highlands with heather covered hills and roaming sheep but there was a gloominess and real sense of remoteness... In hindsight I wouldn't have made the trip to the lighthouse had I known what was involved with the challenging road and steep descent on foot. If you're short on time, I would give this particular diversion a miss."

Well, I'm really glad we weren't, and didn't.

Yes, we were lucky to have a sparkling blue day. When Sir Paul's "mist rolling in from the sea" blankets the area, I guess it can be pretty forlorn -- if not fatal.


But at the end of the day, I love bleak...

I love the way the peat-dark land plummets into a sea that's troubled even on a calm day. I love the way you can see Northern Ireland just a stone's throw away (it's not far from here to the area we visited back in 2015). I love the way it all reminds me, all over again, of the Isle of Man. And we were greeted by a cuckoo -- the first we've heard this year. Cuck-koo... How bleak can it be if there's a cuckoo...?





Once you've toiled your way back up the road, made it back to civilization, and stopped off briefly for the Footprints, the Well, and the Cave at Southend, your recommended destination is the Muneroy Tearoom. Our lunches (smoked haddock fish cakes for me, and "haggis, neeps, and tatties" for Nigel) filled us so decisively that we didn't have room even for the Muneroy's legendary cake. Next time...







Campbeltown reminds me of Port St Mary. That's a good thing. Places that remind me of the Isle of Man gain immediate kudos.

There's lots to do. You can walk all the way around the harbour, and -- if the sun is shining -- you can go to sleep on the grassy slopes of the north shore of Campbeltown Loch, lulled by the rhythmic cawing of the birds in the nearby rookery.







You can visit the Campbeltown Heritage Centre....







You can shop for whisky at one of the town's three distilleries. We picked Springbank.




You can have lunch at the Ardshiel Hotel. This "restaurant and whisky bar" has over 700 iterations of whisky in regular turnover, and nearly 2,000 in stock. We chose a Caol Illa 12-year and an Arran Malt 10-year. No regrets.

The Ardshiel also does fabulous food. My ham dish was a stunner (a reworking of the old gammon-and-pineapple concept, with mash, buttered cabbage, the best baked ham I've had for many years, a slice of pineapple, and a light, ever-so-slightly-sweet sauce). Nigel's roast lamb, from a farm just down the road, also rated highly.




And you can do the Beinn Ghuilean circuit, which offers you great views of Campbeltown and nearby Arran without all the trouble of climbing to the top of the mountain.



If you take the road along the east side of the peninsula (single-track for a lot of the way, passing through quite sparsely populated settlements), you can call in at Saddell Bay, where the video for the Mull of Kintyre single was shot. Heaven knows I'm no fan of bagpipes, but having walked the streets of the band's hometown, and the crunchy beach where the pipers burst onto the scene, even I cannot remain unmoved.



It's worth allocating plenty of time for Skipness. There's a fabulously picturesque old castle, parts of which date back to the 13th century. From the same era, there's an equally impressive chapel, dedicated to St Brendan, and set romantically by the sea. There's a huge expanse of beach, where you can picnic (and next to the castle is the Skipness Smokehouse, where you can buy flavourful mackerel pate, and beetroot, potato, and spinach crackers to eat it with). And there's a lovely riverside walk, with pools of bluebells and thickly moss-jacketed trees.













On the way back we called briefly in at Carradale. The Carradale Hotel will run you up a hot drink and a tea cake, and you can stroll down to the picturesque harbour.


We left the Kintyre Peninsula this morning. We stopped in Inverary, but had time for little more than a bacon butty and a look at the loch.



We dropped off the hire car in Glasgow, and walked -- in suddenly summery temperatures -- to Glasgow Central. We took the slow train to Edinburgh's very picturesque Waverley station, and lunched right next door at Milk, the cafe on the ground floor of the Fruitmarket Gallery (unfortunately, rucksacks, and an opening fee of GBP 7.50 per item at the station's left luggage counter, prevented a tour of the artworks).





And now here we are, beneath the big dome and the wrought iron, waiting for the train back to Newark. Another bit of the year's journey is over...