Log No 138. Mon 23rd Sep 2013 - Auchenbreck to Dunoon, 28 miles (2135 miles walked)

So much for the good forecast, it's another dull day with low cloud.

I wasn't going to try and walk round the peninsula that Colintraive is on, there's no road or path right round and I didn't fancy battling through forestry.

After getting off the bus at 08.35 I walked along the road B836 up the hill and down a 20% gradient to the head of Loch Striven and round to the access road to the Ardtaraig Estate.

Walking past Ardtaraig House I had a short section of track then 2 miles of footpath.

There were pheasants all over the place, I assume the Estate has reared them for shooting.

The footpath didn't look like it was walked very often, the only prints I saw were deer prints.

It was quite indistinct in places and I could only go by the broken ferns. Twice I lost the path completely and ended up down by the shore but managed to find it again.

After a while I had realised that an occasional tree had some red tape around it, it just wasn't on enough trees that you could see ahead to the next one.



Eventually I got to the track back down to the shore road but it had been slow going.

The road to Toward Point at the bottom of the peninsula was very quiet with hardly any cars on it.

I got to the lighthouse at the Point for 14.50 and I still had a good 10 miles to go, this was going to be another long day.

Leaving Toward I passed through Innellan, the houses at the south end were large detached properties with big gardens while the north end houses were very small in comparison.



I got to Dunoon at 17.00 and called into Morrisons to stock up the camper.

This is were I had initially planned to end the day but I had left the camper in a car park 3 miles up the road in Hunter's Quay.

I finally got back to the camper at 18.15 after almost 10 hours of walking, this 28 miles is the furthest I have walked this trip.

Yesterday I had cooked enough mince to do 3 nights so it wasn't going to take long to get my tea but as I had decided to spend the night at Lochgoilhead I put off cooking until I got there and found a parking spot.

It's an early start in the morning to catch the 07.30 bus back into Dunoon.