Knapdale, especially North Knapdale is actually one of the most beautiful places in the world. It is where we have one of the last vestiges of east Atlantic temperate coastal rain forest where the dominant species are the sessile oak and downy birch. The unique geology of SW to NE glacier scoured channels leaves many clay lined lochans and creates the unique coastal habitat in the trident head of loch Sween. Here as well as otters and seals there are hidden gems lying just below the surface that can compare to many a tropical reef system.
The woods themselves, when the midges are tolerable, brim with a collection of mosses, ferns and liverworts that assault the senses with their opulent velvet and silk blanket that are a 1000 shades of green. I have done small mammal surveys of the area and though you never see them there are 1000s of shrews, field voles and other little furries. Amidst the woods there are dozens of pools and flushes that are habitat to dragonflies, moths and wasps that exist almost nowhere else.
There are two nature reserves, the westerly one Taynish is bigger and more diverse but is dominated a once coppiced oak wood. Its bogs smell sweet with the fragrance of bog myrtle and two carnivorous plants, milkwort and sundew, feast on a plentiful diet of winged insects. The extreme west coast on Knapdale is a part of the easterly coast of the Sound of Jura and stood there you can look across the sound and see the cottage where George Orwell wrote 1984. And on a windless day hear the roar of the Corryvreckan, a giant whirlpool that forms between the Isles of Jura and Scarba. At the extreme north west corner of Knapdale, just south of Crinan, in an area dominated by Sitka spruce monoculture planted over the last 50 years I protected an area with over 1 1/2 miles of deer fence, removed all non-native trees, and seeded and planted with locally collected seed of native species. Whilst on that project I saw perhaps the finest and most impressive sight in nature that I have ever been privileged to witness. Sitting eating my sandwiches one bright blue but chilly morning in a cleft of sheltered broken rock close to the the summit of a ridge 3 Golden Eagles, a pair and juvenile, glided no more than 20 feet above me. lol, yes, I earned my crust doing this work, my business was tailored to use Government funding for environmental regeration of native woodlands. That particular project was on Government, (Forestry Commission), land. Unfortunately a change of Government removed the funding and I moved on to my next big idea, leaving a wife from Panama who I'd met in Greece and who fell in love with Knapdale to bring up my son. (It wasn't as simple as all that though as you can imagine and for 16 years now I have played a huge part in my sons life, despite the miles that now separate us).
The wiki article refers to the role of putting unemployed returning soldiers into employment and it was in the wood built hamlet of Achnamara, a village built to house those migrants, that my ex-wife and I first lived in the months following our settling to Scotland after years of travelling. That being just a bit too remote we moved to a cottage on the bank of the Crinan Canal that marks Knapdales northern border. 1/2 a mile south of us there was Dalriada which sits on the edge of a large and treacherous estuarine bog, the Moine Mhor (moiny vor).
This hardly begins to touch on the richness of this tiny area. Castle Sween, Kilmory Chapel, The Fairy Isles, Tayvallich and many more offer histories, natures and human delights that even after 5 years there I had not exhausted.
A wonderful place to visit that now even has beavers!!
