More Kintyre Trails...a lost road....

Roadtrip; Kintyre Day 4
after doing the Kintyre Way to Campbeltown in 2 days i was quite tired but a hot bath,few ciders and good nights sleep back at the holiday house and i was up for a trailride with Ian running alongside the next day...
just along the road from the holiday house a grassy trail cuts up the hill above Loch Coalisport and runs along above the loch for about 4km...


it passes a nice waterfall and is quite steep in places, with a silty surface often on top of the bedrock it has alot of marshgrass in places...



this older section then joins an old tarmac road which switchbacks up from the lochside from the end of the public road at Ellary,
the view is stunning...

a locked gate at Ellary prevents Vehicle Access by the public to this old road which goes across the Knap penulsia to the public road end at Balimore near Kilmory about 4 km away...

passing to small Lochans...the first has a lillie flower circle...

we had a gate key staying at the holiday house if wishing to drive but as Ian said would really only be advisable in a 4x4...
we went a bit along the road to a good viewpoint across to the coast,click on the picture and you may just see the road where it drops down to the coast...

i love old roads,lost roads and old routes and loved this,proberly the untarred section up above the present coast road is the original road,the 1:25,000 map at the house showed a ford marked on it,on the ground the first part is wet in places but all ridable,Ian and i doubt anyone uses it much apart from the shepherd on his quad bike,the tarmac road is used often by tourist cyclists to go to Kilmory and around the coast past Castle Sween...
though there was a set of bike tyre treads in one muddy section... a local MTB`r or lost tourer?...
both sections have no roadside mileage stones or passing place laybys which is odd on the tarmac section of road...wonder when it was downgraded from a public road from Ellary to Kilmory?...
i went onto the National Map Libary website and found this on the Bartholomew Survey Atlas of Scotland, 1912;

see the old track nowadays marked as a black dash path is showen as a track!,
the same as the present coast road below...so wonder when the closed section was tarred?,an old local resident could proberly answer that...
we returned back along the old track so i could do some filming as it was more descending than climbing with just one climb i had to push up at 3/4 the way...Ian as you see just keeps going as usual!...around a 8 mile ride/run...
a nice old trail and road...heres a film...