Kintyre Way

[zhickman]

I walked this in 48 hours over a period of 5 days and did this from South to North. I did this quite late in the year and the weather was definitely far from perfect. There was one nice day and the rest were foggy and wet or grey and raining. Its a fairly remote path that doesn't take you through many towns or villages, but you are never too far from civilisation. I wild camped the entire way so wasn't restrained by needing to find accommodation and places to wild camp are numerous especially if you are happy camping on boggy marshland or atop windy hills. Most of the walk consisted of bog, marshland or muddy fields and whilst there is indeed too much road in this walk, this is often a relief after walking for days ankle deep in bogland. Overall its an enjoyable walk and I didn't see a single other person for the duration. There is also woodland which is nice, especially between Tarbert and Skipness. The coastal section is great and wish there was more of this. I found mistakes in the rucksack readers guide to the path, and often the path description paid very little relation to what the path actually did - otherwise this was a useful guide to have - but it is NOT water resistant as it states.

I took a day out to visit Ghiga, which is worth a visit and also took the opportunity to visit Arran at the end of the walk. The waymarkers are geared towards people walking North to South as they started to give miles to the next town, but these were often very random and made little sense. I personally found this off-putting as I had never walked as far as I thought I had! The waymarking was excellent and very useful. Overall, quite a challenging walk at points, but the uphill stretches are usually rewarded with fantastic views. Even though i was soaked to the skin for 2 days solid due to the rain and fog, I still preferred this to midges, of which there were none, except, bizarrely, for the last 2 miles as I walked into Tarbert.

[Kintyre Ranger]

Pleased to hear that you enjoyed the walk even though the weather was a bit rotten. The milemarks you mentioned record the distance from Tarbert, not to the nearest town, which might explain why you found them confusing. There is also a second edition of the trail guide out now which includes most of the changes we've made to the route. The Kintyre Way is a work in progress and is subject to change as we take more and more of it off road. As long as walkers follow the waymarks they shouldn't go wrong.

Owen Paisley
Kintyre Way Ranger

[zhickman]

Ahhh, that makes perfect sense! Thanks