Day 6 – To Port Appin

Used the Co-Op at Ballachulish which is well-stocked, except for local beer. Ours in Shap is similar, also doesn’t have a very good range.

Amongst the missions for the day was to finish the book I was reading and get well into Patrick MacGill’s Children of the Dead End, which is a coming of age novel about the dreadful conditions suffered by the Irish navvies building Blackwater Reservoir, as I want to go there in a couple of days..

I was headed for a Creagan Station campsite as I needed to fill up with water. It was however full, with the necessary spacing, but the owner was more than helpful. He let me fill the water, and guided me to the forestry car park at Sutherland’s Grove. This was an excellent tip; the place was ideally situated for what I wanted to do, a relatively simple bike ride to get not only the dog used to it, but my body also.. And, staying over, I was the only van there, on a Bank Holiday weekend also.

Port Appin interested me for two reasons other than it’s scenic quality and it’s forest tracks. The Appin Murder in 1752 inspired Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped (1886). Also, as Castle Stalker, on a tiny island just off the coast, was one of the settings used in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Both the body and regular dog were on form for the bike ride, a couple of steady hours, good climbing, and a variety of surfaces. The guy at Creagan Station had told me to get above the reservoir for some views, and he was spot on.