📌 Town in Argyll & Bute
★★★
Fewer than 50 miles away from the Ayrshire coast as the crow flies, but 170 miles and nearly 4 hours away by road, you have to make a real effort to visit Campbeltown – probably Scotland’s remotest mainland town. Curving round a bay guarded by Island Davaar, the town used to be the whisky capital of the world. Sadly, the unwanted tagline of “quantity not quality” became attached to the whisky region, and dozens of distilleries closed leaving only three distilleries producing the water of life today. Springbank and Glengyle offer up the old and new in Scotland’s whisky industry; there used to be an excellent value joint tour, but it appears you now have to visit them separately. Independent shops abound on a scale only matched in Scotland by island towns. The town’s, err, spiritual heritage seems to have infiltrated local food menus, with haggis nachos smothered in whisky sauce featuring prominently. Hey, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.
🌍 Location
📌 Argyll & Bute
🧭 O.S. Grid Reference: NR 719204
🛰️ GPS coordinates: 55.424213,-5.605198
🚶 The suburbs sprawl quite widely, but the town’s distilleries are fairly central. The causeway to Island Davaar is a couple of miles away around the coast.
✈️🚢🚌 Campbeltown lies at the end of a very remote peninsula, but its reasonable size grants it a direct coach connection from Glasgow, and some other local bus routes. There’s a transient ferry route to the Isle of Arran (for onward connections to the Ayrshire mainland), and – amazingly – a seasonal passenger ferry to Port Ellen on Islay and Ballycastle in Northern Ireland. The small airport has scheduled flights to Glasgow.
Explore nearby
<1 mi away
>> Glengyle Distillery ★★★
>> Glen Scotia Distillery (not yet featured)
>> Springbank Distillery ★★★★★
<3 mi away
>> Walk: Island Davaaarrrr! ★★★ (2 mi →)
