Perimeter

Quintin Lake pushes his technology to its limits as he rounds the Kintyre peninsula

Two gentlemen from the Finnish Lighthouse Society nail the experience of staying in most British B&Bs: “Very small, very dirty, very expensive.” At least the latter won’t be an issue for me tonight in the tent. Heading down the Kintyre peninsula, I pass a hill marked on the map as ‘The Bastard’. Only in Scotland do even the hills get blamed for spilling your pint.

There’s a mewing call of a buzzard overhead as I pass dry stream after dry stream, hoping to refill my bottle. I detour to a larger burn (stream) marked as The Snout on the map, which I think will be a dead cert but is a barely perceptible trickle due to the hot summer. I can only just identify the water by lying on my belly with my ear to the ground.

There’s a distant view of Ireland tonight, but I’m too tired to collect driftwood for a fire. It must have been a long day: even the freeze-dried chicken korma, which looks like it belongs on the pavement in Sauchiehall Street, tastes delicious.

“Breakfast is on me,” says Frances, the owner of the Muneroy tea rooms, on hearing where I’m heading. She surprises me with a detailed account of other coast walkers, “We’ve had ’em all in here. Chris, Christian, Ruth, Sam.... Although he’s stopped now he’s had a baby.”

At the end of a long and winding road, I reach the fabled Mull of Kintyre at the lighthouse. The headland rises to 400m and feels like no place to linger, even in this beautiful weather. Ireland is just 12 miles away, and I can clearly make out the Antrim coast. Looking for some flat ground for the tent, I pass the monument marking the site of the 1994 Chinook crash. A full bottle of port has been left tenderly beside.

Heading north from the Mull of Kintyre, there are no paths. Walking over the steep ground to Beinn na Lice sends up a puff of heather pollen with each step. After a few slow miles over a boggy wilderness, a faint quad bike track promises easier going to the Kintyre Way, the long-distance path that is beckoning teasingly in the far distance. It feels good to be heading directly north.

After three more days wild camping, I make it to the Argyll Hotel with two minutes until last food orders, 10% battery left on the phone (which is the map), an empty power bank and a blinking last bar on the camera.

I try to sound casual when I ask if the kitchen is still open.

The WWII lookout over the sound at Gigha frames the landscape so that the scene looks like two flat-screen televisions. The windows filled the space with enough light that I could pull back the shadows with a single exposure. I debated whether to remove the telegraph pole in post-production but elected to keep it in: it draws the eye and hints at the habitation nearby.