Argyll and Bute to Ayrshire

We were ready to head over to Ireland after ripping up, down and around almost the entirety of Scotland, but we couldn’t just head straight to the ferry, there were plenty more castles and ruins to explore along the way.

The first place we happened upon was Glengarry Castle Hotel, located in up a narrow winding road in Invergarry on the outer edge of Inverness-shire.

Invergarry Castle, as it was once known, was the  seat of the Chiefs of the MacDonells of Glengarry, a branch of the clan MacDonald.

As with many of the castles of Scotland, it was burned to the ground and raised again in the 1600’s.

Again in the mid 1700’s, Invergarry castle was partially destroyed by troops under “Butcher” Cumberland (Prince William) as part of the suppression of the Highlands.

There is also an interesting connection to the Hudsons Bay Company that you can read more about at glengarry.net.

Apparently the front entryway is finished with Canadian pine. I am sure a tour would have been exceptional, but we were on a mission to get to the ferry in Troon, and didn’t want to spend that much time exploring. A schedule!

The home has a number of inscriptions in stone on outer wall plaques. The one I photographed reads; ‘a merciful man will be merciful to his beast’. Lovely.

We continued down the freeway through the Highlands and into Argyll and Bute. A relatively remote area with little housing and fewer services, but magnificent (eerie) landscape.

The air was incredibly fresh (and thick) through the ocean splayed location of Argyll and Bute.

At times, our ‘highway’ turned into a single lane gravel road – we would have been concerned with our whereabouts had we not been assisted by our magic map.

The rolling barren hills, low laying fog and lack of people left me feeling, at moments, like we could have been the last people on the planet, like we may never see another person.

It was truly striking, and once again – Scottish Mother Nature had managed to evoke strong emotion (though I didn’t cry this time!).

I imagined the water to be very clean, though truth be told, I had no idea either way. I wanted to drink from each lake – but my reasonable husband kept me from doing so.

There were ruins everywhere in this region. We would have loved to have made it to stunning Castle Stalker, but vowed to make a trip out on our next tour.

Photo from Wikipedia

You would need months and months to fully explore the historical architecture of Scotland – the castles, ruins and stone circles (to start).

There were so many significant ruins  from Argyll and Bute to Ayrshire, that I couldn’t recollect or (successfully google) search out the names and histories of these two (above and below).

We were on a schedule and a mission, so after a few snaps, we hopped back in the rental car and powered through to South Ayrshire.

Additional photos in the slideshow.

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Follow this tour by heading to the ‘8 Country EU Tour‘ section. Many more photos of Scotland at the Habitual Runaway on Facebook.

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Related articles

• Argyll and Bute (wikipedia)
• Glengarry Castle Hotel (glengary.net)
• Fort Augustus and a Stolen Spoon (SCT ’10 Prt 21) (habitualrunaway.wordpress.com)