Cairndow sees mystery marathon and film at Ardkinglas House jostle for position

The weekend of 13th and 14th June was pretty manic at Cairndow, at the head of Loch Fyne.

The Lowe Alpine Mountain Marathon (LAMM) took place over the Saturday and Sunday with about 500 competitors arriving from Friday 3.00pm onwards.

The actual area of the event is not revealed to competitors until the Thursday, the day before.  The base camp was at Clachan Cairndow and the course stretched far and wide to the east and north taking in around 250 sq km of hills and lochs, dotted with some small pockets of forestry.

Every competitor who finished took away a special commemorative bottle of LAMM beer, brewed by Fyne Ales on the Achadunan estate just across the river from the Event Centre on the Ardkinglas estate. And this was the week before the brewery’s own inaugural (and highly successful) Fyne Ales festival.

At the same time, the area also played host to a film crew.  Gate Productions Ltd of Glasgow were filmiong at Ardkinglas where the house was turned into the 5 star ‘Lochside Grange Hotel’ – with uniformed doormen.

The series, based on Rosamund Pilscher’s book, This September and starring (among others), Eileen Atkins, Michael Brandon and Charles Dance, is being made for German television but is likely also to be aired on British Television. We’ll keep you posted.

This adds to the significant tally of films made at the magical Ardkinglas, a subliminal marketing force for Argyll.

The photograph of the lead group of the 500 competitors in the Lower Alpine Mountain Marathon at Cairndow is by copyright holder Andrew Leaney.