“I doubt you’ve been asked this question before,” said my Glaswegian husband to the owner of the shop by the harbour in Tarbert, “but do you sell beach towels?”
To our astonishment, the answer was yes. Good news for me, since I was about to go for a dip in the sublime waters of Loch Fyne. And good news for everyone else who visits the Kintyre peninsula that snakes down the west coast of Scotland: because while it might not always be hot and sunny here, it is often enough for the shops to stock beach towels.
And if you’re lucky enough for your trip to coincide with blue and sun-filled skies, as we were in June, then you’re pretty much in tourist-free paradise. Kintyre’s long, white beaches – both on its rugged and windy Atlantic side (ideal for surfers), and on the calmer sea-loch side (optimal for swimmers) – were ours alone, great swathes of sand, shell and water with hardly another human in sight, such as Tarbert, Saddell Bay and the vast Westport Beach.
We drove to Kintyre via two ferries – Gourock near Port Glasgow to Dunoon, and then across the Cowal Peninsula to the second ferry from Portavadie to Tarbert. Even though we were still on the mainland, it felt like a trip to one of Scotland’s glorious west coast islands.
