Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
hall hollowed out of the middle of the mountain. The turbines drive generators and the
electricity they make goes into the National Grid.
There's a Visitor Centre here so it's not as though you need to ask somebody nicely
before you can see all this, which basically sounds like exactly the sort of Big Engineer-
ing Stuff that I'd really get off on, but the trouble is that when we pass here we're usually
either, as today, on the way to catch a ferry, or on our way back after a holiday and just
wanting to get home. Plus it is a great bit of road, so we tend to have already gone whist-
ling past by the time we think it might be an idea to stop and have a look. Still, one day.
At Connel, tyres swishing through the remains of a light shower, we look for the Falls
of Lora, but the tide's wrong. The falls are tidal rapids caused by a broad lip of underwater
rock at the narrows where Loch Etive joins the sea; twice a day, unless it's a neap tide, the
whole width of the narrows fills with wild, surging surf. It's kind of nature's equivalent
of the Ben Cruachan pump-it-up/let-it-flow-down setup. Actually it's mildly surprising it
hasn't been dammed with a tidal barrage.
The falls lie almost underneath the bridge at Connel. This is an old, narrow girder
bridge which used to carry both road vehicles and trains, when the line still ran to Bal-
lachulish; traffic lights stopped the cars when a train was approaching (I remember seeing
this happen, back in the early sixties when we were on holiday and Mum and Dad's car
was stopped at the Connel side. The steam engine roared past only feet away from us. I
recall being immensely impressed). Even without the trains the bridge is still too narrow
for two-way traffic, so the lights at both ends remain.
The ferry is inbound a mile or two out of port as we arrive in Oban. I've always liked
Oban; it can get so busy in the height of the season that the whole town is basically full,
with nowhere to park and nowhere to stay, but I suppose that's down to geography. The
place grew up around its harbour, and the same intricate foldings of the landscape that
made the anchorage sheltered by hiding it from the open waters mean that the land nearby
is highly convoluted, all steep hills, cliffs and outcrops of rock with relatively little flat
ground available. At such times, if you don't need to go through it but it lies en route, it's
arguably quicker and certainly much more pleasant to take to the network of wee roads
east of the town which I tend to think of as the Oban bypass, but for all its its dizzy bustle
the place has real charm and the ferries, fishing boats, yachts and trains give it a buzz that
by Highland standards makes the place positively colourful.
As the ship quits the harbour, we pass the ivy-smothered ruins of Dunollie Castle. I
climbed this once, on a day trip by train from Edinburgh, and did a circuit of the walls'
broad summit. That was after the first instance of What Happened To My Car, back in
1987, when I was travelling by train quite a lot because I'd picked up a twenty-month ban
for drunk driving. Broke Jim's ankle, wrote off a very large Volvo and demolished a not
insignificant part of a Kentish farm. Long story.
