Sunday 7 July: Kilmartin to Glencoe
After breakfast I have a chat with the mother and daughters. They all love Scotland and feel unhappy about their president Reagan. Imagine how they must be feeling about their president in 2025! It’s raining, but once again stops before I set off – I am so lucky. Ride to Oban, lots of islands and lochs on my left and breath-taking views. Pass close to Glen Euchar where green mounds mark the ‘Barn of Bones’. More grim Scottish history. The MacDonalds locked all the Campbells into a barn, then burnt them alive.
After three big climbs I finally reach Oban and feel quite tired. I find I am reluctant to leave this lovely port. I have a coffee and do some window-shopping. ‘Oh look, that is a very good bargain price for that fridge/freezer!’ Fortunately I can’t carry any of these ‘bargains’.
At the end of the piers, boats leave for most of the islands. ‘Look, this one goes to the Outer Hebrides!’ The whole place has a wonderful ‘start of an adventure’ feel to it. There is a stall on the pier, advertising in very big letters, ‘Only Local Freshly Caught Seafood Served Here’. I order some local scallops, and whilst I am waiting for them to be cooked I decide to have some cockles. They taste villainously acidic, no doubt due to the vinegar they are soaked in.
I say to the stall man, ‘May I have some cockles without vinegar?’
Does he say, ‘I am sorry sir, these are in vinegar because they are not freshly caught at all’? No. He says, ‘Christ, where do you expect me to get fresh cockles at this time of year?’ I suppose he has a point.
The scallops arrive, freshly fried in butter with bread and salad! – they are delicious. After looking at the boat destinations again, I realise that I have run out of excuses to stay here and that I really do have to get going.
I set off and pass castles on the coast. They are thirteenth century, built to protect the locals against the Norse invaders. After the initial climb this section seems a lot less hilly and as I am feeling a bit more energetic, I decide to ride as far as Glencoe Youth Hostel.
It must be thirty-five years since I stayed in a Youth Hostel and I had vaguely promised myself that I would try it again, perhaps just once. I had been told that they are much improved these days and that the Glencoe hostel is in a great location. I arrive there and book in. I produce my inner sheet sleeping bag that I have carried all the way from home. I remember from years ago that it was an essential hostel requirement. The lady warden looks and sounds just like Germaine Greer (I think it really is her, hiding here to get out of the public gaze). She says rather scathingly, when I show her my sheet sleeping bag, ‘You won’t need one of those any more, we have joined the twenty-first century you know.’
I pay my £15 and get given – an inner sheet sleeping bag! I assume that I will have my own little room so I can do my day’s washing, etc., but I discover that I am staying in a large room with eight spotty youths. I go back to ‘Germaine’ and ask ‘If I pay extra can I have a room on my own?’ I also add that I can’t find any towels.
She says ‘We don’t provide towels or separate accommodation.’ (What’s all this about the twenty-first century?)
I think that it is probably time to cycle back to the hotel I saw earlier, but she takes pity on me and gives me a dormitory with six empty beds in it and a clean towel, which I have to promise to return. I am thankful to ‘Germaine’ and think that I won’t give away her secret location to the paparazzi, when they are hounding her for writing leader articles for the Guardian damning the ‘great and good’ or viciously reviewing all the London theatre productions on the Saturday night arts review on BBC2.
As it gets towards dusk, I go for a walk. The hostel is situated between oppressive woods and the mountains. As the mists begin to roll in, I feel that there is a primal malignancy around me, and that time will go backwards to 1692. The MacDonald clan were massacred here by government forces for refusing to pledge allegiance with the monarch. I feel as if I’m about to witness the Glencoe massacre all over again, as I imagine the cries of the slaughtered MacDonalds. In this twilight zone, it seems easy to believe and with relief I hurry back to the hostel.
© Jim Anderson, 2025
Jim Anderson 