C26 (Argyll and Bute)

This article is about the Class III road numbered C26 maintained by Argyll and Bute Council.
For other roads numbered C26, see C26.

Today the C26 is an inconsequential little side road, which starts next to the school in Benderloch and heads west past the holiday parks at Tralee. Turning north, it winds through scattered houses, becoming narrower until it is just a single track road. Beyond a crossroads near Barcaldine Castle, it drops to the shore of Loch Creagan and runs past a fish farm to come to an end next to an old white washed house.

A curiosity of this route is that it is lined by milestones, but when you learn that the house at the end is called the ferry house, all becomes clear. From c1810 until at least the 1910s a ferry operated across Loch Creagan from South Shian to North Shian, and the road was the main road north from Oban. However, despite being recorded as carrying carriages and carts, it seems that the ferry boat was not capable of carrying cars, and so the road around the head of the loch became the more important route, finally leading to the abandonment of this crossing in the 1930s.