Tighnabruaich's old timber pier reaching into the calm Kyles of Bute, the village and wooded hills behind.
Argyll and Bute

Tighnabruaich

The village of the house on the hill, strung along the Kyles of Bute on Argyll's Secret Coast, with one of the oldest steamer piers on the Clyde.

Welcome

Tighnabruaich, the house on the hill, strings itself along the western shore of the Kyles of Bute, the narrow waters that wrap round the north end of the Isle of Bute.

This is Argyll's Secret Coast, so called because few people pass this way unless they mean to, and the Kyles here are less than two miles across, narrowing to a few hundred yards at Rubha Ban.

The village grew with the Clyde steamers. Its villas, Victorian and Edwardian, with sharp gables and stained glass, look out over the water, and at the northern end stands one of the oldest piers on the Clyde, built in the 1830s for the steamers on the route to Inveraray and rebuilt in 1884. Since 1975 the Waverley, the last seagoing paddle steamer, has called here on its summer sailings.

The shore road runs on to Kames, and there are art shops and galleries to browse along the way. Kilbride Bay's sands lie at the tip of the peninsula to the south.

Before you go

Free to visit at any time of year.

The Waverley calls at the pier on some of its summer sailings.

Where
On the A8003, on the west side of the Kyles of Bute.
The pier
Built in the 1830s, rebuilt 1884 to 1885.
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For further reading, before you go.