Ardfern

📌 Village in Argyll & Bute
★★

Follow the single-track road onto the Craignish Peninsula from the A816 and you’ll soon reach Ardfern: a scattered village which feels like a true escape from the daily grind. Life here seems to revolve around yachts arriving and departing from the large marina, boat trips to the Corryvreckan Whirlpool, and the opening hours of the 17th century Galley of Lorne Inn, which serves excellent food. Decades of declining agriculture and industry threatened the survival of a sustainable community here in the 1970s, before the laird developed the yacht centre as a catalyst for revival, and the place now seems to be positively thriving. The old chapel a few miles further down the road is also worth a look, or continue to the very end of the road end for a walk out to the tip of the peninsula at Craignish Point.