Kelly's Pier – Loch Etive and Lunch at the Kilchrenan Inn
A few hours.
The route
Kelly's Pier on Loch Etive was built for Taynuilt's iron furnace, and its old timbers still stand in the water.
The B845 south from it runs past Glen Nant, whose woods once fed the furnace, to Kilchrenan near Loch Awe and lunch at its village inn.
The day
Loch Etive
The morning starts by the water at Taynuilt and ends with a long lunch near Loch Awe.
About three hours, with lunch
Kelly's Pier
Kelly's Pier is where the B845 reaches the shore of Loch Etive, at the north end of Taynuilt, with gravel beside it where cars park. In the 1700s ore came in here by boat from Cumbria for the iron furnace at Bonawe, just inland, to be smelted with charcoal from the local woods, and the iron went out again from the same pier. It's named after a man who was its foreman for many years. Its old stakes are thick with seaweed and home to anemones and crabs, and Ben Cruachan rises to the east. Village children have gone crab-fishing off it for years, and canoeists and swimmers set off from it too.
16 min by car
Kilchrenan Inn
Lunch
It's about 16 minutes' drive south to the Kilchrenan Inn, a few minutes from Loch Awe. It began as a thatched cottage and was later the Kilchrenan Trading Post, a shop with a small pub at one end. Its kitchen works with farmers, crofters, fishermen and foragers, and dishes change with the seasons; the bar stocks Scottish beers and whiskies from independent breweries and distilleries. Lunch is from noon to 2.30pm, Wednesday to Saturday, and from noon on Sundays. Dogs can join you in the bar and the restaurant.
More about Kilchrenan Inn
If it rains
Kelly's Pier is open shore with no shelter, so bring waterproofs on a wet day; lunch is under a roof.
On the way
- Muckairn Church, Taynuilt
Up School Brae, just off the B845 at the south end of Taynuilt, Muckairn Church stands on a hilltop looking east to Ben Cruachan, with a car park beside it. Next to the church of 1829 are the ruined walls of Killespickerill, once the seat of the Bishop of Argyll, and two small carved stones thought to come from the first church here, one of them a grinning face, are set in the south wall.
- Kilchrenan Church
Kilchrenan's parish church of 1771 stands on the hillside above the B845 just before the village, with a lay-by a little beyond it and steps up from there. Set into its east gable is an old graveslab carved with a sword, and at its foot lies a polished memorial the 8th Duke of Argyll put up in 1866 for Cailean Mòr, an ancestor of the Dukes, killed in 1294 in a fight with the MacDougalls.
Make it a weekend
More days out near Oban.
Photographs by Andrew, Fido Flight and Kilchrenan Inn via Google