Sunday, August 02 : When we left Fort William in the morning the blue skies had been replaced with grey clouds again. We turned south onto the A82, rode along the Loch Linnhe for a while, took the bridge over the Loch Leven and onto A828 which turned out a great ride down to Oban. Still going south we continued on the A816, a great twisty road along the coast of the Firth of Lorn, down to Arduaine and Garraron. 10mls further down the road we turned left onto B840, another single track road through the Eredine Forrest, a beautiful countryside along the Loch Awe. We had a short stop at an old 'gas station', a bit later we helped an american couple to get their car back out of the ditch where they had been forced into by 'oncoming traffic' ;-) and continued to Cladich, from where a slightly bigger road, the A819 led us to Inveraray. It's been pretty chilly all day, actualy cold enough to make us stop at various shops and look for warm underwear, and when we left Inveraray it started to drizzle again. So we agreed to take the next campground we can find and call it a day. We took A83 eastwards to Clachan, along the Loch Fyne, and stopped at an Information Center in the Argyll Forest Park to inquire about the local campgrounds.
The guy at the office told us that there's one in Ardgartan, just a few miles away, and before we left he asked: "You fellas aren't afraid of a bad thunderstorm, arent'ya??" During the following night I realized that this might have been a warning...
Anyway, we found the campground and put up our tents. While we did that, another german showed up on a nice SR500, and we all decided to hire a cab to drive us to the only pub in the area which was in Arrochar, about 3 miles away. Well, they not only have just one pub in the whole area, they have only one taxi too, and that wasn't available of course. Luckily the campground owner offered to give us a lift to the pub, and she also gave us instructions on how to book the cabby for our return trip. So as soon as we had entered the Pub, we ordered four pints and asked the waitress to call the cab driver and ask him to pick us up at 11pm. But she just gave us a "Hold on for a second...", disappeared and came back a minute later with the great news that the cab driver is sitting in their TV room, watching football and drinking beer with his buddies, and that he's driving nobody anymore this night. Great!! These boots are made for walking... NOT!!! So when we sat there over our pints, surrendering to our fate, a guy came in, asked us at what time we wanna get back to the campground and promised to give us a ride!?! Well, we hoisted a few more pints, had some good food, and at 11pm the guy showed up indeed and through pouring rain he drove us back to our tents. It turned out that he was not only the pub owner but a biker too :-)