Rating out of 5: 4
Source: Walkhighlands
Reasons:
Starting from Ganavan the Route is easy to reach and offers lovely views over the surrounding area, towards the hills and over the sea towards the Inner Hebrides, such as Mull.
I personally started the route from Dunbeg and since it wasn’t my first walk that day, I didn’t bother to take the way back to Dunbeg from Ganavan Sands but took the bus back to Oban from there.
The way starting from Dunbeg immediately brings you to Dunstaffnage Castle and while I wasn’t able to visit the inside of the castle it was still impressive to watch and discover a bit about its history through the information boards provided. From here the path leads on through the woods towards Dunstaffnage Chapel, which you honestly shouldn’t miss out on, even if mentioned only as a detour its worth a visit and if its just for the tranquillity of the woods its located in.
From here there is some nice nature to witness and some more challenging parts of the route are coming up while you start heading towards Ganavan Sands. This section is pretty steep in parts and to be honest it was the reason why I enjoyed the walk this much. With my fear of heights this part of the route especially down the steeper bits challenged me, these challenges make us see why it is important to keep doing some things even if they scare us in some respects.
However aside from the aspects I liked about those parts I really wasn’t very fond on taking back the cycle path of the way towards Dunbeg. I can’t judge how it would have been in the end but I decided against it for the reason of missing motivation having checked it out before and already having had some trouble with motivating myself to go further under some exhaustion. I was told at Ganavan Sands that I wasn’t missing out on much with that part of the route.
We each have to decide ourselves what we like in a walk and what we prefer not to do. Those are my reasons for ‘only’ giving this route 4 out of 5 stars, which to be honest is still quite good!
