Qualla: Cowal

Cowal: Introduction

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hamiltonstone, CC BY-SA 3.0. Look at a map of western Scotland and Cowal jumps out as something strange. It is a peninsula clearly attached to the mainland, but only barely. The sea has cut so deeply into it from three sides that the southern half splits into three knuckled forks separated by long fjord-like lochs. The Kyles of Bute curl around its southern tip; Loch Fyne hems it in to the west; Loch Long and the Firth of Clyde slice down its eastern flank. There are no railways and there never have been. To reach Cowal from Glasgow you go up and over the Rest and Be Thankful, or down and across the water by ferry. It is, in every practical sense, an island that just happens to share a thin neck of mountains with the mainland.

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Image: Hamiltonstone | CC BY-SA 3.0

Cowal: A Name Older Than the Map

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Scotland_location_map.svg: Eric Gaba, NordNordWest derivative work: Uwe Dedering, CC BY-SA 3.0. The name Cowal is the inheritance of a vanished kingdom. When Gaelic-speaking settlers from Ireland crossed the sea in the early medieval period, they formed the kingdom of Dal Riata across what is now Argyll. Within Dal Riata, a kin group called the Cenel Comgaill held this peni...

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Image: Scotland_location_map.svg: Eric Gaba, NordNordWest derivative work: Uwe Dedering | CC BY-SA 3.0

Cowal: Three Forks and a Spine of Mountains

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thomas Nugent, CC BY-SA 2.0. The northern third of the peninsula belongs to the Arrochar Alps and Argyll Forest Park, the latter established in 1935 as one of Britain's earliest forest parks. The highest point in Cowal is Beinn Ime in the Arrochar group at 1,012.2 metres, with Beinn an Lochain not far behind...

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Image: Thomas Nugent | CC BY-SA 2.0

Cowal: Lamonts, Campbells, and a Massacre

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alan Reid, CC BY-SA 2.0. The medieval clan map of Cowal traces back to an eleventh-century marriage between an heiress of the Cenel Comgaill and Anrothan, a grandson of an Ulster king. From his descendants came the MacLachlans at Castle Lachlan on the Loch Fyne shore, the MacEwens at Castle MacEwen in Ki...

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Image: Alan Reid | CC BY-SA 2.0

Cowal: Doon the Watter

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thomas Nugent, CC BY-SA 2.0. Steam power changed Cowal more than any clan war. After the PS Comet entered service in 1812, paddle steamers from Glasgow's Broomielaw turned the Clyde into a holiday corridor. By the late nineteenth century thousands of Glaswegians went doon the watter to Dunoon, Tighnabruaich,...

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Image: Thomas Nugent | CC BY-SA 2.0