by William Battrum
THE GARELOCH.

A narrow and indifferently kept road, notwithstanding the number of turnpikes on it, runs from Row Point to Garelochhead. At many points two carriages could hardly pass abreast, and when it rises above the level of the beach, wall or fence seldom interposes to protect the incautious traveller from being precipitated on the rocks beneath. It is badly drained, and there is no footpath for humble pedestrians like ourselves, and in wet weather is generally submerged in mud to a depth varying from two to five or six inches. With all these drawbacks, however, there is compensation to be found in the scenery through which it passes. Many a smooth and unexceptionable highway leads weary miles past a dreary and uninteresting country, without one refreshing feature or suggestive object anywhere arising to attract the eye or gladden the heart of the toiling traveller, while many a rough and rugged road penetrates the fairest scenes of nature. The smoother the journey the less the pleasure it confers—the glowing panorama of glen and mountain, lake and forest, is only witnessed after the toilsome ascent. As in the roads through life, with toil and trial are most of our pleasures won, and not found in our journey on smooth and easy levels, so it would seem the roughest roads in nature often lead through the most varied and longest remembered of our pleasant experiences; and the road here has this advantage. The road winds around all the little bays and creeks; rises here steeply in front; presents there a sudden turn; at this point reveals the whole loch to the eye; at the next passes in front of some handsome villa or fragrant garden, shutting out the hills front view, or diverges beneath a clump of trees, or between a hedgerow, but nowhere lingers so long as to create a monotony or suggest a wish for change. The distance from Row to Garelochhead is about six miles. The loch varies in breadth from half a mile to a mile, is in some places very deep, and to the eye is completely locked in on every side, the narrow outlet at Row Point being hardly perceptible at any distance. On both sides of the loch, and at its head, rise a barrier of heath-clad hills, generally sloping at an easy declivity down to the water; overtopping those at the head of the loch, the high, bold, rocky mountains that stretch across the head of Glen Croe, and above Ardentinny, present their clear sharp outlines in the sky, and form a pleasant background to the picture. Like most Highland lakes, Gareloch, a few years since, to a traveller’s eye, shewed but few signs of civilised life. The hills were clad with heath, and towards the margin of the loch, when partially reclaimed from morass and brushwood, a scanty corn-field, and unplastered, heath-thatched hut, here and there told of human life and enterprise. At the head of the loch, a little clachan of these huts gathered together, inhabited chiefly by fishermen, formed the village. Railways and steam navigation, however, have changed all that; the aborigines are as nearly extinct as any doomed tribe of red men, or have become amalgamated with the invaders of their territories, and are now indistinguishable, and their huts and corn patches have passed away with them.

There are few buildings of any antiquity, or memorials of the past possessing interest enough to detain the stranger, or induce him to wander from the beaten track. The oldest inhabited house was formerly Blairvadic Castle, situated about a mile above the Row—an unornamental pile much resembling one of the border keeps or peels common in more southern counties, possessed by James Buchanan, Esq., of Craigend, and long the property of that family. It is now pulled down, and its place occupied by a stately modern castle, the property of Sir James Anderson. On the hill above Ardchapel, at Shandon, enthusiastic and imaginative explorers have found the remains of an old place of worship. We confess, however, to an utter inability to identify what seems the more probable remains of an old dry dyke, with anything like the foundation of a sacred edifice, even although the tradition is supported by the name the spot yet retains. A much less equivocal building, surrounded by remains of an ancient churchyard, can be plainly distinguished at Faslane, a little further north. Here worshipped generations, now long slumbering in dust, of the Celtic tenants and vassals of these glens.

Here, doubtless, some jovial Friar Tuck held saints’ fast days o’er other fare than parched peas and holy water; or, perhaps, anchorite Cistercian imposed penance on the lawless Macfarlane or Colquhoun, or chanted midnight mass for the unshriven soul of dead freebooter and outlaw. The little chapel with its broken shrine and remote churchyard is worth a visit. It occupies a peculiarly lovely and sequestered spot on a rising knoll almost surrounded by a burn. Adjacent stood, in old times, Faslane Castle, the foundations of which can hardly now be traced among the moss-grown stones and grassy hillocks covering its site.
But if there are few ancient buildings, there are many modern ones well deserving more than a passing glance. At Shandon there is a collection of villas unsurpassed in beauty and picturesqueness of situation by any on the Firth of Clyde; and occupying a prominent position near the loch, is the princely mansion of Robert Napier, Esq., a marvel of masonry and decorative art, and containing an attraction of rare treasures of ancient and modern art not equalled almost in Scotland. In close proximity, and not much inferior in attraction, is Shandon House, the residence of Walter Buchanan, Esq., M.P. From Shandon to Garelochhead, about two miles distant, the road winds along some beautiful little bays—in particular, we notice Faslane Bay, as possessing peculiar attractions, and we wonder that it has not caught the eye of any building speculator as a desirable site for villas. Here the village of Garelochhead first appears in view, and a few minutes’ walk takes you to that memorable wooden pier where on a quiet Sunday forenoon some three years ago the battle of the barricades was fought, a battle which ended in the subsequent expenditure of no insignificant sum in the Court of Session. The village itself is prettily situated at the head of the loch, and now stretches in a semicircle around it. A screen of hills clad in heath to their summits rises behind it, and separates the head of the Gareloch from Lochlong. At the top of the hill is the “wee public,” called Whistlefield Inn, a welcome resting place for the fatigued pedestrian, and from whence a magnificent view of Gareloch, Lochlong, and Lochgoil, with their rugged and hoary guardian mountains, can be obtained. The locality is a favourite resort of holiday parties, and there are few fine summer days in which it is not visited by some pleasure excursion steamer. In the fishing season a little stir is created in the village, and ample employment for all the girls and boys afforded for a month or two. In June and July fleets of fishing crafts harbour about the head of the loch, nightly dispersing through it in search of herring of which great quantities are sometimes captured. The loch generally used to be somewhat celebrated for fishing, but seems of late years to have fallen rather into disrepute.

    


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