Argyll and Bute. Argyll and Bute guide

Perhaps most enchanting of all is the sense of wilderness in narrow passes, inaccessible terrain and endless lengths of loch. The fact that Argyll’s most famous road is called Rest and Be Thankful given its gradient goes some way to showing why travel is easier by water. Southern Argyll’s Kintyre peninsula projects for some 30 miles into the Kilbrannan Sound, drawing close to Ireland. At its northern end it gives onto Loch Fyne, which splices the region and spills down to the Firth of Clyde and the fingers of its sea lochs. The Secret Coast, on the Cowal peninsula between Loch Fyne and Loch Long, is a realm of lonely countryside, forgotten villages and crumbling castles, where squirrels forage, common seals bask and golden eagles soar. North of here, the Munro-encircled 25-mile Loch Awe is Scotland’s longest freshwater loch. It connects to picture-postcard Loch Etive via the Pass of Brander, which is so narrow that legend says an old woman once barred it using a scythe to hold back an army.

Then there are lively outposts with rich histories – names like Inveraray, Campbeltown and Oban, the charming Victorian town at the heart of Lorn, the northerly part of Argyll. Lorn comprises a cluster of sleepy islands – just offshore there’s Kerrera, Lismore, Seil and Luing – but little landmasses are scattered all around Argyll’s waters. Some were settled from the sixth century by religious men who lived lives of solitary prayer, and there’s still a sense of being on the edge of the world. Argyll’s southernmost point feels equally remote: the Mull of Kintyre, just 12 miles from Ireland, reached by a twisty and spectacular road and connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus between East and West Loch Tarbert.

The Isle of Bute is as intersected by peninsulas as the mainland. Sheltering in the Kyles of Bute opposite the Ardlamont peninsula, it plunges into deep bays and squeezes through narrow kyles. In days gone by, cattle would swim from a kyle at the north end to Collintraive to be taken on to markets in central Scotland. It’s a charming rural image that continues to play out in leafy hedgerows and quiet lanes, but Bute is now Scotland’s fifth largest island by population and marries its quiet countryside with cultural attractions. It’s also one of the best spots in the region for views: from the highest point, Windy Hill, at 913 feet, you can see across the Cumbraes and Arran’s northern peaks and try to piece together this mystical jigsaw of island and jagged-edged mainland that has a coastline longer than that of France.