Who’s up for a Scottish road trip? While we still live in a time of travel restrictions and social distancing, road trips and staycations may be in the holiday planning for many through the summer of 2021 and beyond. Defined as a vehicular vacation, road trips allow for fun, flexibility, and travel to new – even if not so distant destinations, with the added benefit of limiting in-person interactions with those outside members of your own social bubble.

As travel restrictions in the UK are eased many in England, Wales, and Scotland are turning to domestic staycations as an alternative to traditional yet still banned summer holidays abroad because of Covid 19 concerns. With that very target audience in mind, the Explore Kintyre and Gigha Tourism and Marketing Group recently launched the Kintyre 66 – a 66 mile looping road trip around the Kintyre Peninsula on the A83 and B842 roadways.

The K66 is Scotland’s newest tourist route and it is unashamedly patterned after the rousing success of the North Coast 500 – a much longer 516 mile route around Scotland’s far north coastal area launched some 5 years ago. But the K66 is not the first to jump on the NC500 bandwagon. There’s also the similar South West Coastal 300, the Snow Roads scenic route – a 90 mile long circuit through the Scottish Highlands, and the Heart 200, launched in 2019 linking Loch Lomond and the Cairngorm national parks. Organizers had hoped to launch the K66 in 2020 but pandemic lockdowns derailed those plans for a year.

Each of those routes has a singular primary objective, to draw tourists to explore their regions of Scotland. The launch of the K-66 route is also seen as a potential aid in economic recovery for the area following the pandemic lockdown, and as we’ll learn shortly, a general decline in tourism over the past few decades.

So where is the Kintyre peninsula? It’s located in western Scotland, in the southwest of Argyll and Bute. The peninsula stretches about 30 miles from the Mull of Kintyre on the south to East and West Loch Tarbert in the north. While physically it’s only 60 kilometers from Glasgow to the main hub of Campbeltown, by car it’s about a 4- hour drive of around 140 miles. Anyone who’s visited Scotland and traveled by car knows how driving distances and times can be vastly different than what we’re used to here in the USA and other parts of the world. The peninsula is joined to the mainland by a mere 2 mile stretch of land once sometimes submerged by a daily tidal flow, helping the region gain its reputation as the mainland island.

Kintyre offers much of the typical Scottish experience visitors are seeking in a very compact corner of the country. There is stunning scenery, including views to the islands of Gigha, Islay, and Jura to the west and Arran to the east. Ferry connections make day trips to these isles an added bonus to the K66. There are various golf courses including the most famous first tee in the world at the Machrihanish course. Watersports opportunities are numerous as are coastal and scenic hill walks. Historic castle and abbey ruins can be visited as well as standing stones.

Dunaverty Bay at Southend with Ireland across the sea

Torrisdale Castle, East Kintyre

Seal Point, West Kintyre

Campbeltown and City Hall Tower

Tarbert pier with fisherman's boats and ferry. Low tide water and evening light. Scotland.

Old barn at Skipness, Scotland. Looking towards the isle of Arran

Click on any of the above images to enlarge. Top 3 photos are courtesy Raymond Hosie.

Johnny Beverage grew up and was schooled in Campbeltown, became a chef and moved away to see the world. He advanced into hotel management and spent 35 years in the international hospitality industry calling places like Dubai, Pussan (South Korea), Singapore, and others home along the way. In 2017 he and his wife Mandy returned to Kintyre where they purchased and now run the Dunlossit House B&B in Machrihanish, near Campbeltown. With his lifelong ties to the peninsula and intimate knowledge of the hospitality industry it’s no surprise he is a member of the Explore Kintyre and Gigha Tourism and Marketing Group who are the braintrust of the new K66. While patterned after the NC500 it would be wrong to call the K66 just a copycat theme. Yes, it’s goal is to increase tourism to the region but to understand the full reason for why the Kintyre 66 you have to look back at the history of tourism on the peninsula. Kintyre was once a popular tourist destination for Scots who would go “doon the water” for summer holidays from the turn of the century right up to the 1960s. The introduction of budget airlines and cheap travel to the continent for holidays abroad changed all of that. Now it’s hoped the K66 will revitalize tourist interest, both domestically and, when restrictions are removed, internationally. (Interview with John Beverage follows)