Port Beag

A friend and I put on our 'Keep Oban Beautiful' hi-vis vests this morning and went out  to pick up litter along Jacob's Ladder. It's a route to town I use a lot and just hate walking down the steps and seeing all the rubbish dumped there by the evening drinkers. The only stuff we couldn't pick up was what had been thrown down the steep slope at the top of a cliff. If I could reach them with my eight foot bamboo pole I pushed them over the edge where they crashed down to join the years of rubbish lying beneath the back wall of Oban distillery. Sounds bad, but at least they can't be seen unless you make a big effort. I failed to reach the traffic cone caught up in the brambles or what looked like a small rucksack or a fleece hanging in a holly tree over a forty-foot drop! They will have to stay!

I went on to collect all the rubbish along Star Brae, another path down to the town, which was looking absolutely disgusting. I don't know how people can pass it on a daily basis and ignore it. This time, among the drink bottles and cans, was a disposable barbecue. I think the word disposable on the box meant something else!

On the positive side, at yesterday's Keep Oban Beautiful meeting we agreed that on 24/25th March we were going to organise a 'Spring Clean Oban'! We're going to divide up the town on a map and try to persuade all sorts of local groups from Girl Guides, hotels, school children, churches, distillery, Calmac to join in - the opportunities are endless! If it doesn't work it won't be for want of trying!

After all that I drove up to Pulpit Hill in the sunshine and enjoyed the view, taking several photos of which this is one. This part of Oban bay is Port Beag and the ship is the Nlv Pharos, the very relevantly named vessel belonging to the Northern Lighthouse Board. Built in Gdańsk, Poland, and launched in 2007, she is the tenth vessel to bear the name.