Travel Guide Lochgilphead

At the head of Loch Gilp, the town is the administrative centre of the "department". Nearby, there are menhirs, prehistoric cemeteries and Neolithic stone circles. Ardrishaig, next to Lochgilphead, marks the beginning of Coe Canal, which allows browsers to avoid the Mull of Kintyre, made famous by the eponymous song of Paul McCartney, and go directly north, departing from the Firth of Clyde and Loch Fyne. Always overloaded during the summer, the canal was designed and built in 1817 by Thomas Telford, the architect of many Highland churches. Its shores would be haunted by ghosts of monks. This canal of just under 15 km was built between 1793 and 1817 between the villages of Ardrishaig and Coe in order to avoid the difficult passage by the Mull of Kintyre, at the tip of the peninsula. His work, painstaking and several times subject to technical pitfalls, asked for the combined efforts of three engineers.This is one of the most brilliant achievements of the industrial period. This shortcut to the Sound of Jura is now extremely useful for sailboats flying to the islands. Fertile valleys border from the end of the canal, which forms a particularly exceptional landscape around the Coe basin from which you can see the islands of Mull, Jura and Scarba.