Mar 10th, 2015

Author: donich_admin

Historic Paths

R happened to find this very interesting website covering heritage routes in Scotland. We noticed that not half a mile from our house is the ‘Lochgoilhead Carriage Road’ This is of particular interest because we really enjoy a walk you can find in the walking guide to the area (highly recommended) on the Lochgoilhead Holidays website

The one I am referring to is the ‘Drimsynie Beg to Lettermay’ walk on page 17, but R and I do a rather longer variant of it. Our route is that we walk up through the holiday camp and up along the top path above the loch. At the dam for the hydro, bear right over a piece of rough ground and on to a forestry road. Following this road for several miles will take you through some spectacular woodland and mountain views, and eventually bring you back to the farm at Drimsynie Beg (about 2 miles from the village just off the ‘main’ road) from which you can walk back to the village. So the only problem with this was that walking this a circuit, we were always stuck with walking back down the road, which is not always that pleasant in summer as there generally a bit of traffic. However the heritage path route connects the walk back up through pleasant woodland without having to go near the road.

R and I walked part of it tonight. To get to the start of it from the village, you walk out to the second bridge over the River Goil and there is a decent track to the left. This leads to a peaceful walk along the beautiful riverside with some spectacular old trees. We didn’t walk the whole way tonight because it was getting dark – but the plan at the weekend (if the weather is not too bad) is to walk the entire circuit.

The other interesting thing about this path is that when you look at it on the map, it connects in to the Duke’s path heading out of the village to the other side and going past Corran Lochan to the end of the peninsular. So at one point these must have effectively been one route. Fascinating stuff….