Although I walked my daughter too and from school today (which I've posted about before), I'm sharing about a walk I have undertaken a number of times, to Kilchurn Castle which is by Loch Awe in Argyll, Scotland.
For info, we use the word loch instead of lake in Scotland. In fact there is only one body of water called a Lake in Scotland - the Lake of Menteith - the rest are considered lochs.
Kilchurn is a ruin, but maintained by Historic Scotland, so you can still go in and visit. It stands on a spit of land that juts out into Loch Awe.
The car park for the castle is around 15mins walk from the castle. On first leaving the car park you come to the lovely rail bridge above that is still used - it possibly dates from the 1800s as it is quite an old rail route. The route runs from Glasgow to Oban on the west coast. The bridge looks a bit decrepit in the picture above but it is well maintained and inspected regularly.
Sometimes there is livestock kept on the land in and around the castle - this lovely highland cow was having a nice lie down when we passed (where I'm from in the North we pronounce it coo). There is often sheep kept there as well, but there was none there that day.
Once you pass the bridge, it then opens out on a piece of flat land that leads out to the castle.
Its fairly boggy (swampy) land, but these fox gloves were doing quite well and must be quite suited to that type of land.
The castle itself is fairly big (around 6-7 floors high on one side, and has a large internal courtyard.
There are info boards around it, and the one above shows what it might have looked like in its day - it must have been quite incredible as there would have not been much else in this area at the time apart from small hut type houses and the odd church, as its a remote area.
The pic above is from inside, and that round shaped stones you can see on the grass is actually the base of one of the towers that fell inwards into the courtyard after becoming derelict.
There are walkways that let you up onto various parts of the walls and towers which is pretty cool - great for kids to run around on and explore.
The castle also overlooks mountains on one side, which makes for fairly dramatic views.
I really like this internal pic (above) - here you can see a mix of old windows, fireplaces and then the smaller post holes, where the floor beams were placed to create the different levels and floors within the castle. I would love to know how they created the plans for it at that time as you can see it was quite a complicated structure.
Considering this castle is atleast 500 years old, I'm always amazed at the workmanship and here you can see just how good it is, on one of the higher parts. The masonry skills were quite impressive considering they had to work with the stones they could find, with specific parts then carved for key supports and lintels.
The view above looks across the loch adjacent to the castle, to a piece of forested land, which is quite representative of forest in this part of Scotland.
We used to live around half an hours drive from the castle, and have visited quite a lot, so I've done this walk many times - with the last time being last summer, when we were back again for a visit. We do enjoy it and I'm sure we'll go back again !
