On our way to Oban

by Dennis · November 9, 2022

June 24, 2022 – made the two-hour drive from Callander to Oban today; it only took four hours. I know I spent a good portion of the last post discussing adventurous driving and shouldn’t start in the same vein again. However, I did hit my first single track today. We (meaning me) were a little concerned knowing the challenge would occur sooner or later, later would have been better. It turned out that the single-lane roads were not nearly as scary as the small two-lane roads. If you have seen the PBS series “All Creatures Big and Small”, The single-track roads are much like what is presented in that series. Very narrow but most drivers are very slow and courteous. At one point I was squarely in the middle of the track and the outside mirrors on both sides of our miniature car were brushing through the five-foot-tall ferns growing along the road. The old farms we passed looked like they were from the 1800s or earlier and we crossed streams using ancient arched stone bridges. These were beautiful but better suited to a small horse-drawn carriage. My truck would not have worked well here.

The single-track bridges were challenging but the adjoining farmland was beautiful.

An t-Oban (Gaelic meaning The Little Bay) is a coastal town that started in 1714 as a trading outpost and later in 1794 the town proper grew to support the Oban distillery. There is very little flat ground between the bay and the surrounding hillside, everything you need is uphill from wherever you currently are. . Streets were laid out haphazardly, sometimes one way because they are too narrow to allow cars to pass each other and for a bonus, the street names, if they are marked at all, are painted on the second story of the corner buildings. (It took us a few days to figure that out.) We rented a very nice small apartment high up the hillside. To get there required driving a very steep lane that snaked up the hill and at one point crossing a one-lane arched bridge that was so steep the lane was not visible for a time and I had to just hope that someone wasn’t driving up the other side. Enough about that. One more antidote about our VRBO lodging. The apartment was furnished with a washing machine. Great, after the first week there were a lot of clothes to wash. There were wet towels left inside from the last rental. We thought, just throw them in the dryer, then start our clothes. Looking around we found there was no dryer. The owner living next door came by about then so we inquired as to the location of the machine and were told to use the solar dryer. He pointed out the clothesline on the back porch that was in the pouring rain at that time. We postponed our washing and moved the wet towels to the solar dryer on the porch where they remained wet for the next several days.

Scenes from Oban

One of the many local attractions is the historic “Bridge over the Atlantic” to the small island of Seil. The actual name of the bridge is Clachan, built-in 1793. The arched stone bridge is interesting but not as much as the Tigh an Truish tavern at the western end of the bridge. The story that we heard starts with the Dress Act of 1746. As a way to suppress Highland culture kilts were banned. Men living on Seil island took umbrage with this law and continued to wear this traditional garment. However, doing so could land them in prison or seven years in a penal colony. When a man would cross over to the mainland he would stop at the Inn to change into trousers, upon return he would again change back into his kilt. Hence the name, Tigh an Truish, House of Trousers.

The Atlantic Ocean is a little narrow here, but this small section has had whales pass through.

The next day we took the A82 up to Fort William, a large town about an hour North of Oban. The A82 is the major road following the coast and then inland along a loch. The road hugged the shore which precipitated enough curves to give a Formula One driver pause with cars approaching each other at a combined speed of more than 100 miles per hour within 24 inches of each other. On most days while we were in Scotland it rained and this day was no different, making the drive even more interesting. (I promise, I will stop complaining about the roads.) The town of Ft William started as a fort built in 1654 to control some Scottish Clans. Today it is mostly a tourist destination with a beautiful historic main street. It was a great place to enjoy the local shops and to try a dram or two of the famous national beverage.

Coastal scenes along the road to Ft William.

The next stop was the Glenfinnan Viaduct built in 1898. Nearby is the landing site of Bonny Prince Charles with his army in 1745, but I’m sure you already knew that. More importantly, Glenfinnan was featured in the first Harry Potter movie. The Princess and I stood in the rain for 45 minutes with a crowd of strange on-lookers waiting for the train to pass. No surprise I guess but this is a big deal. Maybe 100 people were doing the same thing, some with serious cameras most with wet iPhones. After the train had passed the gentleman standing next to us dropped to one knee (in the mud) to propose marriage to his companion. The crowd cheered and the woman cried, I think it probably worked out for him.

One last stop to mention in this post, On the drive back to Oban I took a detour through the mountains around Glen Coe and came across a road James Bond drove in the movie Skyfall. This road was another single track I went much slower than Bond. I do not see how he got the Aston Martin DB5 through some sections.