In my last post I left you in Ardfern, a lovely little village that sits handsomely on the shores of Loch Craignish. We were travelling towards Aird which, according to our map, is an isolated village overlooking the sea at the end of the pennisular we were driving down. Given its idyllic location we thought it would be ideal for our planned picnic. There is only one road to Aird, and what a road it was. It snaked along the side of the Loch before turning inland and going over to the northern side of the peninsular.
We were busy taking in the fantastic scenery when suddenly we came to an abrupt halt as a gate closed off the road. At the side of the gate was a lodge house, which I assumed was guarding the entrance to a private estate.
"Well that's it," I said To Terry Anne,"it doesn't look like we'll be having our picnic down here. We'll have a cup of tea from the flask and head back."
Anyway I had my brew and pipeful of tobacco while Terry Anne went to investigate. She returned smiling just as I finished my tea.
"There are no signs on the gate saying we can't go through it," she said in a hopeful tone.
"Look, I said, being the ever cautious person and worrier about nowt, that I've always been, "if they wanted people to carry on down that road they wouldn't have put a gate across it would they?"
"Perhaps, but if they wanted to keep people out they would've put a sign on the gate saying 'PRIVATE KEEP OUT', so sup up, we're going through.
So Terry Anne manned the gate and as I drove through I was half expecting a Rob Roy look- a-like to charge out of the lodge protesting wildly at our audacity.
After closing the gate, my wife jumped in the car and I drove off quickly while keeping one eye in the rear view mirror. A few hundred yards later we crested a small rise and found ourselves in heaven. There was even a small deserted car park which removed all my fears about us trespassing. We were surrounded by beautiful blue sea and had the place to ourselves.
We wandered through this paradise of lichen covered rocks, closely cropped grass and wild flowers, taking it in and revelling in our good fortune. For Alpine gardeners the place was perfect beacause Wild Thyme was growing everywhere creating natural rockeries in every nook and cranny.
There was also an old pier, so Aird must've been a busy spot in years gone by, but there were no houses and no information, so it is still a mystery to me. If you know anything about the history of Aird, I'd love to hear about it.
Anyway, we had our picnic in this fantastic place and only saw two other people while we were there. Perhaps the gate puts most of the tourists off.
Fully satisfied with our picnic we roamed about Aird for a another couple of hours and then headed back to the lodge.
I'll leave you with a reminder that if you want to find out more about me and my books please click here,
or if you would like to see some of my pyrography work please click here.
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