We were on a one lane road with a few wide spots for passing if you happened to meet another car. I

Home New Tips & Stories Random Travel Tales World Travel Tips World Travel Tips Passports & Visas Tour Planning List Custom Tour Planning When To Go Free Travel Search Packing and Preparation bed and breakfast inns for sale Packing Lists & Tips Carry-on Packing Tips Carry-on Size Packing for Road Trips Security Packing Guide Travel Document List Departure Checklist Health & Safety Tips Travel Vaccinations Travel Health Tips Packing Medications Malaria Pills Pepto-Bismol! Travel Advisories Airport Help & Surviving Flights Airport Help Airport Arrival Abroad bed and breakfast inns for sale Fatigue After Flight Long Flights - Help! Foreign Is Fun Foreign Travel Foreign Money Foreign Language bed and breakfast inns for sale Foreign Borders bed and breakfast inns for sale Foreign Rental Cars Foreign Road Trips Foreign Toilets!?! Accommodations and Cruises Hotel / B&B Tips Adventure Cruises World Tented Camps African Tented Camps Where To Go... What To See See Our Country List World Drive Ideas Europe bed and breakfast inns for sale Travel Ideas Africa Calls Travel in America Just A Few More Destinations Norway Our Way Our Scottish Castle Australia Wine Drive Borneo Botswana Brazil China Israel Jordan Madagascar Panama Canal Drive Rwanda Please Help Us.... Share Your Ideas Your Travel Tips Your Travel Stories bed and breakfast inns for sale Share Funny Signs Share Scottish Clan Stories Clan McEwen Stories Find Other McEwans Nuts and Bolts Contact Us-Ask Judy! Our Travel Roots About Us Mouse's Travel Links FAQ Financial Disclosures Privacy Policy Mouse Site Map MouseMap for Travels Site Sponsors
We had read in a clan book that the Clan McEwen had been centered around Loch Fyne west of Glasgow in an area called Otter Ferry. This seemed like a good place to start for a low key, out in the countryside adventure.
We reserved a rental car in Glasgow and flew on over with no other reservations and not too much more research than that. Previous trips to Scotland and England had taught bed and breakfast inns for sale us that it’s easy to find places to stay when you have a car, and we knew that Mark could handle driving on the left. You just need to be armed with a good map.... Our National Geographic map wasn't specific enough, so we bought a good road map of Scotland at the airport Tourist Office. Armed with this map of the Loch Fyne area and knowing that about 2/3 of the way down the loch there was a dot labeled Otter, we figured bed and breakfast inns for sale we had a good place to start.
We drove around the end of Loch Lomond, through a little village called Cairndow and started down the east side of Loch Fyne. We passed a smaller village called St. Catherine's, completely missed what was supposed to be the village of Creggnans, then we saw few dwellings of any kind.
We were on a one lane road with a few wide spots for passing if you happened to meet another car. I began to have doubts that we would find much down this road, but it was still early in the day so we pressed on. After all, we had only traveled about an hour from Glasgow.
The road hugged the edge of the loch, and Scotland's highland scenery was beautiful. Finally we came to a little shop right on the loch, so we decided to ask the proprietor if she had ever heard of a site where the Clan McEwen had come from.
Oops, she had never heard of the Clan McEwen. This wasn’t too encouraging, but as we walked back to the car, another car pulled up. It was a local Scot who had just stopped at this wide spot in the road to sit and enjoy the view. We asked him if there was a town down at Otter. He said not a town... there was a pub, and he thought there was a B&B, but he didn't know about Clan McEwen either.
We went into the pub for lunch, and saw that they were serving McEwan’s bed and breakfast inns for sale Ale... one of our favorite beers in Scotland. I wonder why? After some small talk with the publican, Mark said something like, “I’ll have to have a half pint of that McEwan’s because that's my name.”
Over a lunch of locally made venison sausage and chips, we learned that there was, as we had read, a site where there had been a small castle. The proprietors of a hotel about 5 miles up the road could tell us how to find it. The locals in the pub told us a little bed and breakfast inns for sale about the area.... how right here at Otter there was a long land spit exposed at low tide and that we should not try to walk out there because when the tide came in you couldn’t bed and breakfast inns for sale run fast enough to get back in time. Later we read that Otter came from the gaelic word of “oitrich” which meant land spit, and that there had been a ferry here at one time. That bit of history made sense... things seemed to be coming together.
Our proprietors at the Kilfinan Hotel said yes there had been a clan gathering here last month, and yes they could help us find the castle site. We asked to see a room. Room number one had a view out over the loch in the distance, and if you knew where to look...... over behind a big oak tree, you could see where the castle once stood.
After explaining that the hotel had no official connection with the castle site, and that in Scotland people were free to walk through fields at their own risk, they gave us directions to find the Castle MacEwen ruins .
With written directions in hand, we walked back down the road then turned left and hiked past the smitty, wandered through sheep and cows in the fields, climbed over rock walls and fences, passed through gates, leaped over streams and scaled styes. Finally, we walked down the beach on the shore of Loch Fyne, then up a wee hill and found the castle.... Well, we found a pile of rocks that had been a castle... a small one... four hundred bed and breakfast inns for sale or so years ago.
It didn’t matter that there wasn’t much there or that we weren’t even sure how closely we were connected. It was a castle ruin with our name on it, and it was exciting to find the castle we had been looking bed and breakfast inns for sale for.
We floated more than walked back to the hotel. They had a cute little pub tucked in a corner, and we had dinner with a full pint of McEwan’s Ale to celebrate. We had found our Scotland castle.... Our Scotland adventure had started well. This is what travel is all about.
Think we've misspelled the Clan name a few times here? There's a reason for that. We have an explanation and more stories on our page for Clan MacEwan -- MacEwen Stories. We'd love to have you share a Clan story there and read what others have written. Or maybe write a story about YOUR clan's Scotland bed and breakfast inns for sale castle.
Rental cars can give you freedom to travel to small, out of the way places. The sites you find will be smaller, more intimate and perhaps, as our Scotland bed and breakfast inns for sale castle was for us... more personal. You will most likely find fewer tourists in areas like this....
The airport is your friend.... Don't rush out of the airport even though you are probably anxious to start your adventure. Take your time and collect yourself on arrival, and then collect things that will help make your journey of discovery easier..... money, information, directions, maps, even food.
There is much more to explore around Loch Fyne and this southwest corner Scotland's Highlands. More Scotland castles, more pubs and scenery. This is where wandering kept us going, and we'll tell you about this in the future. We picked up some tourist brochures bed and breakfast inns for sale and talked to the locals and went off to tour Argyll and Scotland's west coast as well. We found mysterious ancient bed and breakfast inns for sale standing stones to explore, the sleepy Isle of Bute to idle around, and the picturesque town of Inveraray with the Duke of Argyll's castle to visit. Now THERE is a Scotland castle worth seeing! We even found castle bed and breakfast inns for sale hotels to stay in... but it was the Castle McEwen that was our hook for this trip, and finding it will always be one of our highlights. Happy travels... even if you don't travel the world... just remember that life is a journey... embrace and enjoy it. Judy and Mark
New! Comments Have your say about what you just read! Did it help with your travel planning and preparation? Eager to leave on that next vacation? Please leave your tips or comments in the box below.
We have lots of fun traveling... and we've had lots of fun creating this website. It earns us money too! No get-rich quick scheme here.... just honest pages about our travels. Is this something you've bed and breakfast inns for sale ever wanted to try?