A Circuit of Kintyre

Having spent another day working on the Network Tearoom getting it ready for reopening this Friday, Mrs B and I were ready for a break and by late afternoon decided to do a loop of Kintyre in the car and catch something to eat in Tarbert.

As I had refused to join the panic buying of fuel in Campbeltown over the past few days because of the power cuts, I was almost out of diesel and we therefore had to head south to the Wee Toon to fill up the car. As expected it was totally deserted, probably because most cars were by now loaded to the gunwales with fuel!

The striking thing about the drifting snow was how there almost seemed to be clear demarcation lines between areas badly affected and those with no snow. On the west coast the area around Clachan was the worst hit with the snow ploughs having cleared a path through drifts still up to 5 or 6 feet high. On the "Wee Road" back to Carradale the area around Spion Kop was the worst but the road was now clear of all snow. Remarkably, by the time we approached Claonaig the snow was all gone and it was a different world. It was now easy to see how Kintyre was cut off for 4 days, which was not quite as obvious in snow free Carradale.

We took a break in the journey to enjoy a fish supper in Tarbert, which was still busy with SSE linesmen and others assisting in the emergency repairs. Indeed, during our lap of Kintyre we saw dozens and dozens of their vehicles. Hats off to them for pulling out all the stops in atrocious weather to get us back on line.

Also stopped off for a while at Tayinloan to catch the sun setting over Ghia. I had hoped to get some blips of the snow, but nearly all the stopping places were full of ploughed snow so we just had to keep driving!