Raw Spirit Read Online Free
Author: Iain Banks
book or two) but always wanted to experience for myself. I mean; a whirlpool! One so ferocious you can hear it from miles away! How cool is that?
From Dunoon along the coast road – past the peaceful-again Holy Loch where the old US Polaris subs had their floating dock and support ships – to the first of the Great Wee Roads we’re going to encounter in this book. Officially it’s called the B836 but I’m really bad at recalling road numbers so to me it’s filed in my head as the Great Wee Road To The Left Just Outside Dunoon Before You Get To The Younger’s Botanical Gardens That Takes You Towards The Kyles Of Bute, The Colintraive Ferry For Bute, Tighnabruich And The Ferry For Tarbert. Or something like that.
At the head of Loch Striven I pass a field filled with huge dark brown wooden poles lying on the grass in the hazy sunlight. They look like oversize telephone poles, but must be due to carry power lines. The smell of creosote fills the Land Rover’s cabin. Sometime round about here I realise I’m going to miss the next ferry to Tarbert, where I’ve been hoping to drop in on some old friends – and thus complete a clean sweep of ex-editors this weekend – so I take a detour to Otter Ferry via a precipitous wee road curling over the hills towards Loch Fyne.
Great Wee Roads: a digression
.
A Great Wee Road in my terminology just means a small road that isn’t a main route and which is fun to drive. Often it will be a short cut or at least an alternative route to the main road. It will virtually never be quicker than the main-road route but it will be a pleasure to drive, perhaps partly because it has less traffic, partly because it goes through lots of beautiful scenery and perhaps because it has lots of flowing curves, sudden dips, challenging hills and/or fast straights (though GWRs rarely have many of those). A GWR can be extremely slow – often
way
below the legal limit – and still be enormous fun, it can even be a single-track road, quite busy with traffic and so somewhat frustrating, and yet still be a hoot, and some roads only really become GWRs when it’s raining and you have to slow down.
Anyway, that single-lane-with-passing-places route over to Otter Ferry – snaking up some deciduously wooded slopes towards the broad flat tops of the low hills and their close-ranked bristles of pines – is definitely a GWR.
By the side of Loch Fyne I head north again and back down Glendaurel, finally having to press on once more as I’ve ever so slightly underestimated the time required – again – and so end up gunning the Defender up the long curving slopes towards the viewpoint looking out over the Kyles of Bute (this is one of the best views in Argyll, maybe one of the great views of Scotland; a vast, opening delta of ragged, joining lochs, flung arcs of islets and low-hilled island disappearing into the distance).
This must be the first time – certainly the first time in decent weather – I haven’t stopped to take in that great sweep of view. The Land Rover tackles the hill fast in top gear, leaning mightily on the bends but still seat-of-the-pants secure; it feels good, but I’m annoyed at myself for not being able to spare the view more than a glance as I whiz by the car park at the summit.
Getting on to the ferry from Portavadie to Tarbert is a bit easier than it used to be; last time I was here you had to reverse onto the boat, which must have been fun if you were towing a caravan. Back then, a few years ago now, my car was the only vehicle on the ferry, which felt kind of romantic somehow. I was on the way to meet an ex-girlfriend for lunch; a strictly platonic visit, but, still, there was a certain poignancy there.
A year or so later the same ferry figured at the start of the first episode of the TV adaptation of
The Crow Road
, with young Joe McFadden playing the central character, Prentice McHoan, standing all alone on the deck, coming back to his family home for a funeral. I
From Dunoon along the coast road – past the peaceful-again Holy Loch where the old US Polaris subs had their floating dock and support ships – to the first of the Great Wee Roads we’re going to encounter in this book. Officially it’s called the B836 but I’m really bad at recalling road numbers so to me it’s filed in my head as the Great Wee Road To The Left Just Outside Dunoon Before You Get To The Younger’s Botanical Gardens That Takes You Towards The Kyles Of Bute, The Colintraive Ferry For Bute, Tighnabruich And The Ferry For Tarbert. Or something like that.
At the head of Loch Striven I pass a field filled with huge dark brown wooden poles lying on the grass in the hazy sunlight. They look like oversize telephone poles, but must be due to carry power lines. The smell of creosote fills the Land Rover’s cabin. Sometime round about here I realise I’m going to miss the next ferry to Tarbert, where I’ve been hoping to drop in on some old friends – and thus complete a clean sweep of ex-editors this weekend – so I take a detour to Otter Ferry via a precipitous wee road curling over the hills towards Loch Fyne.
Great Wee Roads: a digression
.
A Great Wee Road in my terminology just means a small road that isn’t a main route and which is fun to drive. Often it will be a short cut or at least an alternative route to the main road. It will virtually never be quicker than the main-road route but it will be a pleasure to drive, perhaps partly because it has less traffic, partly because it goes through lots of beautiful scenery and perhaps because it has lots of flowing curves, sudden dips, challenging hills and/or fast straights (though GWRs rarely have many of those). A GWR can be extremely slow – often
way
below the legal limit – and still be enormous fun, it can even be a single-track road, quite busy with traffic and so somewhat frustrating, and yet still be a hoot, and some roads only really become GWRs when it’s raining and you have to slow down.
Anyway, that single-lane-with-passing-places route over to Otter Ferry – snaking up some deciduously wooded slopes towards the broad flat tops of the low hills and their close-ranked bristles of pines – is definitely a GWR.
By the side of Loch Fyne I head north again and back down Glendaurel, finally having to press on once more as I’ve ever so slightly underestimated the time required – again – and so end up gunning the Defender up the long curving slopes towards the viewpoint looking out over the Kyles of Bute (this is one of the best views in Argyll, maybe one of the great views of Scotland; a vast, opening delta of ragged, joining lochs, flung arcs of islets and low-hilled island disappearing into the distance).
This must be the first time – certainly the first time in decent weather – I haven’t stopped to take in that great sweep of view. The Land Rover tackles the hill fast in top gear, leaning mightily on the bends but still seat-of-the-pants secure; it feels good, but I’m annoyed at myself for not being able to spare the view more than a glance as I whiz by the car park at the summit.
Getting on to the ferry from Portavadie to Tarbert is a bit easier than it used to be; last time I was here you had to reverse onto the boat, which must have been fun if you were towing a caravan. Back then, a few years ago now, my car was the only vehicle on the ferry, which felt kind of romantic somehow. I was on the way to meet an ex-girlfriend for lunch; a strictly platonic visit, but, still, there was a certain poignancy there.
A year or so later the same ferry figured at the start of the first episode of the TV adaptation of
The Crow Road
, with young Joe McFadden playing the central character, Prentice McHoan, standing all alone on the deck, coming back to his family home for a funeral. I
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