I am never exactly sure where the Firth of Lorne starts and finishes, but let's say it starts at Crinan at the top of the Sound of Jura to the east, stretches across to the Garvellach Islands in the west, from where it extends north to Lower Loch Linnhe. It will include Oban but not Dunstaffnage. It should of course also include the southeast coast of Mull, but that is described separately.
This whole area is steeped in pre-history and history, from burial cairns and cup marks, to defensive duns and the occasional broch, to St Columba and other Christian monks who brought their religion from Ireland, to the first Kings who made their capital at Dunadd near Crinan, to the Vikings and the Lords of the Isles, and even up to flying boats in the 2nd World War. Robert Buchanan was more poetic in 1871 when for him the Firth of Lorne was "a glorious sheet of salt water, fed by the mighty tides of the Atlantic, and forming, both on the islands and on the mainland, a line of sea-coast not easily matched for loneliness and beauty. Numerous islands, large and small, stud the waters, forming narrow passages through which the tide boils with terrific fury." (The Land of Lorne including the cruise of the Tern to the Outer Hebrides, Robert Buchanan, Chapman and Hall, London, 1879).
