Boat, going nowhere

Inspired by Ricky Shitpants and his quest for ghost towns, I went to the loch Etive side village of Bonawe today. There is still a quarry there, with gargantuan lorries that thunder past my mother's house, shaking the walls, but of the tenements that once housed the quarry workers, there is no sign. On the other hand, the manager's house has recently been rebuilt as a private dwelling. There are council houses, private houses, and a school, but no shop; no post office; and definitely no pub. The road stops here, and the ferry hasn't run since the sixties.

"A car ferry used to run across Loch Etive from Taynuilt to Bonawe. It was run by J & A Gardner who owned the quarry at Bonawe. In 1966, the railway from Connell to Ballachulish was closed and the railway bridge at Connell (further down Loch Etive) was fully opened to vehicular traffic so the Bonawe ferry was closed."

I wonder what it would be like, as a non-driver, to have one's name on the council housing list for years, only to be offered a house at Bonawe! The bus does serve the village, but the vehicle is currently resting, broken down in the Achnaba church car park. We went to church at Bonawe, once, in the 70s, and on a picnic to Glen Etive, where we got stuck on the wrong side of a locked gate. My mother had to run several miles to fetch assistance. This must have been the early 70s, for I recall she was wearing orange velour hotpants and a top to match.

In the 80s, two Criminals known as Hammer and Knife ran the village. They had a pitched battle over a woman one winter night, driving cars at other through the village, with the locals cowering in their houses, too afraid to creep out and call the polis from the public call box. Their empire of terror crumbled into legend when one of them was sent to Barlinnie jail in Glasgow.

Welcome to the Wild West Highlands.