Surprise - it brought back childhood memories

Mc Cagis Tower Oban

The cottage was very clean and cosy and a great base for exploring the surrounding area. I had quite a surprise as your cottage is only a few miles down the road from a lodge I stayed as a child - Glen Acculish, just past the Ballachulish House hotel!! I remembered going under the bridge by the Ballaculish hotel. We did lots of walking. On Sunday we went into Oban -walked up to McCaig's tower, wonderful views, then went on a boat trip to see the seals and had a nice meal in McTavish's.

Monday we went to Glengarray castle, and walked to the top of the hill behind it, tiring but worth it.

Tuesday we went to Fort William and then on to Glen Nevis further past the centre to a long and rocky walk to a waterfall. That was definitely worth the trek.

Wednesday we went to Mull and walked to Torosay and the other castle further on (got the bus back though as a long trek!).

Thursday was the only rainy day so we did the Seal Sanctury and went to do the hydroelectric station but it was fully booked.

Friday we went for a ride Spean Bridge way and did another waterfall walk and on to Mallaig for the ride. We also went for a ride along Glencoe to the Visitor centre. We had two lovely meals at the pub on the old Glencoe road when we found it!! We hadn't gone far enough the first time we tried to find it.

We had a wonderful time thank you so much for all the information in the cottage and emails. We didn't want to come home!

Marie and Leighton

4 Do's and 1 Dont's to find your independent holiday property on the Internet

Our family spotted this hotel beside the Station at Verbier in Switzerland. You could ski straight down to it. "This is the place for us" we said. So we booked it for the following year through an internet agent.

When we arrived, it was the wrong hotel at a different station. Ouch!

The internet sales agency. The first Don't

We made the mistake of booking the hotel through an internet agency, where you book online with the Directory, not the Hotel. Don't do it. They know lttle about the property, you lose contact with the owners, and because the owners pay a hefty commission to the agency, above 30% very often, they load up the charges. You'll generally get it cheaper if you buy direct from the owners. That is the first Don't.

Directories. The first Do, but choose big ones.

Of course you can find a property in a Directory, one which quotes the owner's web site and e-mail address and you then deal direct. Just make sure the Directory is a big one so that there are many properties in the area you search for. The directories charge the owners a fee for listing, but it usually works quite well. You ought to bookmark your short-list otherwise you'll find difficulty in finding them a second time around. That's a Do.

Finding owners' web sites.

Not so easy as it sounds because you have to wade through Google's pages of Directories before you find individual sites. There are about 10,000 holiday properties in Scotland. The moment you Google "self-catering Scotland" you are in trouble. The sites in the first pages are all those by clever professionals who know their way around Google's 200 "web crawlers" which identify the sites they think you will want - using only your search term as a guide. Clever, these directories, with oodles of specialised knowledge - about Google. They know about inbound
links, about keyword emphasis, they know about anchor text and they write their text around the search terms they think you will use. That impresses Google no end.

Do narrow your search

You'll get fewer directories showing up on Google if you narrow the area of your search. You would not find our site if you Googled "Scotland self catering", you would have to search through the first couple of pages if you used "The Highlands" but you would find us on page one if you Google "Glencoe cottage" and its variations.

You could also find us on page one if you Googled, simply, "Lochside cottage". People rarely look past page one - they change their search terms. Well, if you get crowded out with directory sites you may have to go to page four or more to find individual owners' sites.

When to book.

In Scotland, the two most popular areas are Edinburgh, and the Highlands - our area. Properties divide into two, there are the large Victorian houses or other houses with four or five bedrooms. If you are trying to get a property for several families to share there are many opportunities, but don't leave it until late. The best properties in the high season are nearly all booked out. You'll have a problem if your date is fixed. By May all of us at the top end have only a week or two to offer in the Summer. We get one third of our high season bookings about 7 months in the previous year, particularly from returning guests.

Off season, you can try for late bookings. The only exception to this is for Christmas and for New Year. These are premium weeks and will sell out.

Spending Hogmanay in Scotland is a pretty romantic notion for some.

Or, Do use these other two ways to find your ideal holiday property. Google the word "Dmoz" This is the world's largest hand-edited Directory, called the Open Directory. It is not too difficult but a bit laborious to navigate your way through the options to find the property you want anywhere in the world in fact.

The route to find us, for example, is: Recreation/Travel/Europe/United Kingdom/Scotland/Highland/Lochaber/Self catering/then you'll get a good number of properties. If you use the Back button you can find other areas, obviously.

The final sneaky way is to do what 600 people every year do. They go to our own site where we have listed about 25 attractive self-catering properties whose owners we have come to know. They are all over Scotland, and all good properties. Try them
http://www.bayviewkentallen.co.uk/holidayhomelinks.html

Good hunting.
John
Lochside cottage near Glencoe in the Highlands of Scotland

Short Breaks Glencoe

Winter breaks in Glencoe
Help for holiday home owners for their Web sites

"You'll not beat this place, Johnnie"

Gllian never calls me Johnnie unless she is happy. New place just opened in Glencoe village street, Carnoch Restaurant. (They do Take-away too – very valuable if you are fed up with cooking for yourselves)

Our meal bill totalled £26 for a Salmon dish of superb quality and beautifully cooked , and Haddock and chips, but with a very light batter, followed by Banana pancakes, and cream, two lattes, two large glasses of wine. The ingredients were of the highest quality and so was the cooking.

The owner’s eye – it makes a big difference
They are lovely people, too, and unlike all the other restaurants in the area, the young owner is out front mixing with the customers. Book 01855 811140

This might not be too fair on David at Crafts and Things across the road. He is always around welcoming people, saying hello, but he does not do full meals.

Our lady at our table was from Glasgow, as you can tell probably from the following exchange.

“Did you take the tip from the change?”
“No, I never touch your money, I’m not married to you.”

For quick with you’ll never beat Glasgow people. I was brought up on it, because I was raised there and am proud if it.

John
www.bayviewkentallen.co.uk/appin.html
www.bayviewkentallen.co.uk/holidayhomelinks.html
http://holidayhomewebsupport.blogspot.com
www.bayviewkentallen.co.uk/touringscotland.html

How to stop big burly Scotsmen in their tracks

This is Springtime in Scotland. the weather is gorgeous. This is the local megalithic stone near our cottage. How old? Well, let me see, would 3,000 years old impress you?

Imagine the scene. I have just been overtaken on a single carriageway road by that most lethal of drivers, a white van man from Glasgow, doing 60mph.

Coming the other way is a monster truck full of pine trees just harvested, at the same speed. Closing speed of the two vehicles 120mph.

Neither of these men would you want to make angry in a back street of the Gorbals on a Saturday night when they’ve had a couple of drams.

Both of them screech to almost a halt – 5mph, and pass within centimetres of each other, very gingerly.

Why?

There was a tiny lamb, sitting on the side of the road with its feet rubbing together on the white line, bathing its head in the sunshine. On the other side of the road is Mother sheep, blissfully unconcerned, munching away at the grass thinking “Got to get some sustenance, the little sod has been keeping me up all night.”

That’s how you stop even the most formidable Scotsmen in their tracks. They are just big softies.

John

Ps Mind you, I wonder what their speed would have been if I had been sat on the roadside myself instead of the lamb, with a sign around my neck saying “Sassenach”
(Google it, if you must)

www.bayviewkentallen.co.uk/touringscotland.html
www.bayviewkentallen.co.uk/shortbreakscotland.html
www.bayviewkentallen.co.uk/holidayhomelinks.html
http://holidayhomewebsupport.blogspot.com/

I might regret saying this - few midges this Summer?

You heard it here first. There will be few midges around this Summer.

Great news. I'm thinking of putting out a press release on this. We are at the cottage now and there are no signs of the dreaded midge. They usually start around May, build up to a ferocious climax in August, and die off in Septemer having feasted on human blood all Summer.

You won't believe the next bit, but I promise you it is true. Although we are on the West Coast with its notorious reputation for midge atrocities, and you can see the human remains from countless bites all around the Glencoe Lochan in the Summer - why do you think they put the Glencoe Hospital there? - we get virtually no midges where we are at the cottage.

We have not had one guest complain about midges here, at this spot. No I can't believe it as I write. Neither Gillian nor I, in all the nineteen years we have been here, have ever complained about the midges. and we are wimps. The first to scurry off to bed if there was any danger of a bloodsucking female around. It is the females who bite. As ever.

Why few midges this year, then?

We now have a comprehensive midge measurement service for the first time in Scotland. In the Spring of last year they were forecasting that midges would be bad in a dry summer. They weren't. they were very light. They know this because there are machines around that kill off midges, and the scientists can collect the remains and get a count.

To their amazement, they collected significantly fewer than the year before.

If we are to get aother long dry hot summer, then starting with a lower population and breeding stock then I think we should get fewer still.

The midge forecasters don't start until this month, so I'm getting my forecast in early.

Nothing like hot news - a scoop in fact.

John

www.bayviewkentallen.co.uk

http://holidayhomewebsupport.blogspot.com

http://www.bayviewkentallen.co.uk/glencoewalks.html

http://www.bayviewkentallen.co.uk/touringscotland.html

Kentallenite - the most amazing granite stone

This is the pier at Kentallen, 200 yards from the cottage. Best fsihing in the area.

Three young people took a week off and gathered at the cottage. This is what they said. "We really enjoyed our week, the scenery is amazing. We wandered about a lot and tried some fishing. We caught 30 fish in total but only four big ones."
"The neighbours and locals were friendly and helpful, and the cottge was great. We are going to come back and explore more.
The cottage was great."

A party of Japanese got out of a coach at the pier near the Hollytree up the road from here. They took out little hammers and began hammering at the rock. Strange behaviour? Well not if you are a geologist.

Our cottage at Bayview is built from local stone quarried from 300 yards away. In the world of geology this Kentallanite stone is famous.

Its particles look like this, but you would need quite a powerful microscope to see this.

The stone was formed about 400 million years ago and is very very tough. On different occasions it has apparently had six miles of ice on top of it. Hardy stuff! We could tell that by the language of the men who installed our double glazing. Fancy our cottage being 400 million years old!

John

www.bayviewkentallen.co.uk/fishing

www.holidayhomewebsupport.blogspot.com

www.bayviewkentallen.co.uk/holidayhomelinks.html

The wrong man was hanged here in 1752

This is the site of the killing of the Red Fox. It is about 200 feet above the curve in the road between Ballachulish Pier and Kentallen. It is actually the ancient road to the South which used to pass in front of our cottage. The victim was carried from here to Ballachulish House where he died from his gunshot wounds.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote "Kidnapped" based upon a true tale of the Highlands. His uncle built the Corran Ferry so he knew our area well. In the story, a lad was accused of killing a local "factor" - the man who collects the rents in the Highlands. He was chased and harried all over the country to Edinburgh, but they hanged the wrong man, his 52 year old cousin, for the murder.

The victim was a Campbell - always they seem to feature in these atrocities, the Campbells. This one was very unpopular with the Stewarts of Appin because he was a bit tough on them. He had plans to clear out a lot of the Stewart families from their lands. These are the lands around our cottage, including Ardsheal across the water from our lounge. 1752 was the year exactly 70 years after the Massacre of Glencoe.

This chap Colin Campbell, The “Red Fox” was having a drink in Inshaig the old pub in Duror with James Stewart, known as James of the Glens. James was arrested, and taken to Inverary for trial. It was rigged, James was hanged on a rock above to-days Ballachulish Hotel and beside the bridge. You can see the rock there if you look. His bones were tied together and left there as a warning to others.

Friends later cut them down and buried them at Keill Graveyard near Duror just off the road to Oban two miles to the South of us.

Gillian and I made a serious effort a few years ago to find the graveyard. It was ruined, very overgrown and based in the middle of farmyard buildings. We found it but it took a bit of doing.

There is a big row going on in the local papers now about how it has become even more difficult to find because the farmer has locked gates and hampered access. We hope it gets opened up properly, it is a national treasure this site.

John

ps The weather has been unbelieveable up here. Who says it rains in Scotland?

www.bayviewkentallen.co.uk/glencoenews1.html

www.holidayhomewebsupport.blogspot.com

www.bayviewkentallen.co.uk/glencoespringtime.html

Forgotten village found near Fort William

150 years ago an outbreak of Cholera wiped out a little community, high in the hills, above the town. Tollie, on th slopes of Ben Nevis, and its origins go back at least to the 1800's and possibly even further back towards the Bronze Age.

They've found the outline of the houses there amongst the trees. Funds for some archeology are being sought and ideas discussed about restoring the village.

Another old, lost village, Daingean is now a tourist attraction. It was found and restored a couple of years back, near Invergarry. In that case the residents were shipped out as part of the infamous Clearances around the 1850's.
Undoubtedly there are other lost Highland settlements to be disovered.There have been so many ups and downs in the Highlands over the centuries.

It is a beautiful country, but it can be savage.

John

The picture is of Stalker castle, near the cottage

www.bayviewkentallen.co.uk

http://www.bayviewkentallen.co.uk/glencoespringtime.html

Three feet of rain per second. We loved it.

Youngsters only care about rain, cold and snow if the parents make a fuss. This wonderful family just gets out there and does it. They stayed at the cottage last week.

HI John and Gillian,
Thanks for having us at Bayview. We had a great week. The whole place is stunning and the cottage was perfect for us. All the little ones enjoyed being there.

We had one glorious sunny day and walked the old road through Glencoe (with buggy and baby rucksack!) Phenomenal views. The last 2 days were snowing heavily, which made doing things tricky, but one of the snowy days we walked (unbelievably the three year olds did walk themselves) up to the first waterfall up Glen Nevis path.

The next day was difficult to do anything, but when the clouds cleared (for about 10 seconds at a time) the views of snow covered tops were breathtaking. In between times it followed the traditional three feet of rain per second, so we did some the other things you suggested eg sealife centre (great for our kids), Ice
climbing at Kinlochleven (hard work!) but good play area for the kids at both.

We had a great time, thanks.
With best wishes
Damian, Barbara, Elizabeth, Catherine and Ruth

That story takes us back to our own family - quite a few years back, it must be said. You can see the details of where they went on the following pages

http://bayviewkentallen.co.uk main site

http://www.bayviewkentallen.co.uk/glencoewalks.html

http://www.bayviewkentallen.co.uk/trackwaysfromglencoe.html

http://www.bayviewkentallen.co.uk/wildlifeglencoe.html

John

"Pregnancy is Hindering my Game"

Pic of wood in Ariundle forest by Mr.Pallant last year.

Georgina and Richard had a week at Kentallen in January

Hi John
We had a lovely time and a really relaxing break. We went to Oban and Port Appin which was lovely although unfortunately the Airds hotel was closed but a lovely setting all the same. We had a lovely day out to Mull crossing on the Fishnish Ferry. We saw deer and very few people! Had lunch at Tobermory and then did a circular drive round the island with a quick stop at Calgary Bay which was beautiful and deserted!

We took the fabulous road to nowhere to Kinloch Hourn which was amazing (although a little windy and rainy so missed the full impact of being surrounded by all the munroes!), but were kept company by the hundreds of deer along the way and a couple of birds of prey we couldn't get close enough to to identify.

We also got in a couple of bowling games at Fort William where pregnancy seems to be seriously hindering my game....much to my husband's pleasure! But made up for it by beating him at pool with the mini table in the cottage at Bayview, so my sincere thanks for that!

We also did the Walk at Ariundle but spotted no golden eagles unfortunately, but a lovely walk none the less.

We ate at the Clachlaig Inn most nights although tried out the Bulas restaurant at Ballachulish Hotel, which despite very polite service was a bit of a shambles, with the fire alarm going off and instigating an evacuation in pouring down rain, and what seemed to be them just getting to grips with the menu. It was interesting and not totally unenjoyable but pricey and food wasn't quite worth the price. Bardolino was lovely though as I sniffed Richard's from across the table.....

I was disappointed that we couldn't find any mention of Burns night anywhere in the area, not even at the Clachlaig, but I had the Haggis none the less and enjoyed every mouthful!

It was cold, windy and rainy with a bit of snow thrown in so definite need for snuggling and lots of wool. We had a lovely time, thank you very much.

George and Richard

JW

If anyone is interested we offer a blog site for other holiday home owners helping them to prepare their web site. http://holidayhomewebsupport.blogspot.com

We've got some time free in the cottage in March. Have a look at this page

www.bayviewkentallen.co.uk/winterbreakhillwalking.html.com